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ACROSS THE PLAINS 



Across the Plains 



WITH OTHER 



MEMORIES AND ESSAYS 



BY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1896 

[All rights reserved '] 






COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 



Bequest 

Albert Adsit Olemona 

Aug. 24, 1933 

(Not available for exchange) 



TO PAUL BOURGET. 

Traveller and student and curious as you are, you will 
never have heard the name of Vailima, most likely not even 
that of Upolu, and Samoa itself may be strange to your ears. 
To these barbaric seats there came the other day a yellow book 
with your name on the title, and filled in every page with the 
exquisite gifts of your art. Let me take and change your own 
words: J'ai beau admirer les autres de toutes mes forces, c'est 
avec vous que je me complais a vlvre. 

R. L. S. 



Vailima, 
Upolu, 
Samoa. 



LETTER TO THE AUTHOR 

My Dear Stevenson, 

You have trusted 
me with the choice and arrangement of these 
papers, written before you departed to the 
South Seas, and have asked me to add a 
preface to the volume. But it is your prose 
the public wish to read, not mine ; and I 
am sure they will willingly be spared the 
preface. Acknowledgments are due in your 
name to the publishers of the several maga- 
zines from which the papers are collected, viz. 
Frasers, Longman's, the Magazine of Art, and 
Scribners. I will only add, lest any reader 
should find the tone of the concluding pieces 
less inspiriting than your wont, that they were 
written under circumstances of especial gloom 



viii Preface 

and 2lckness, 'I agree with you Ae lights 
seem a little turned down,' so you write to 
me now; the truth is I was far through; and 
came none too soon to the South Seas, where 
I was to recover peace of body and mind. 
And however low the lights, the stuff is 
true. . . .' Well, inasmuch as the South Sea 
sirens have breathed new life into you, we 
are bound to be heartily grateful to them, 
though as they keep you so far removed from 
us, it is difficult not to bear them a grudge; 
and if they would reconcile us quite, they 
have but to do two things more — to teach 
you new tales that shall charm us like your 
old, and to spare you, at least once in a while 
in summer, to climates within reach of us who 
are task-bound for ten months in the year be- 
side the Thames. 

Yours ever, 

SIDNEY COL V IN. 
Februasy, J1892 



CONTENTS 



i. Across the Plains 

2. The Old Pacific Capital . 

3. fontainebleau . . . ' . 

4. Epilogue to ' An Inland Voyage 

5. Random Memories 

6. Random Memories continued . 

7. The Lantern-Bearers . 

8. A Chapter on Dreams 

9. Beggars 

10. Letter to a Young Gentleman 

11. Pulvis et Umbra .... 

12. A Christmas Sermon . 



PAGE 

I 

77 
108 

143 
168 
189 
206 
229 

253 
272 
289 
302 



I 

ACROSS THE PLAINS: 

LEAVES FROM THE NOTEBOOK OF AN EMI- 
GRANT BETWEEN NEW YORK AND SAN 
FRANCISCO 

Monday. — It was, if I remember rightly, five 
o'clock when we were all signalled to be 
present at the Ferry Depot of the railroad. 
An emigrant ship had arrived at New York 
on the Saturday night, another on the Sunday 
morning, our own on Sunday afternoon, a 
fourth early on Monday ; and as there is no 
emigrant train on Sunday, a great part of the 
passengers from these four ships was concen- 
trated on the train by which I was to 
travel. There was a babel of bewildered men, 
women, and children. The wretched little 

i 



2 Across the Plains 

booking office, and the baggage-room, which 
was not much larger, were crowded thick with 
emigrants, and were heavy and rank with the 
atmosphere of dripping clothes. Open carts 
full of bedding stood by the half -hour in the 
rain. The officials loaded each other with 
recriminations. A bearded, mildewed little 
man, whom I take to have been an emigrant 
agent, was all over the place, his mouth full of 
brimstone, blustering and interfering. It was 
plain that the whole system, if system there 
was, had utterly broken down under the strain 
of so many passengers. 

My own ticket was given me at once, and 
an oldish man, who preserved his head in 
the midst of this turmoil, got my baggage 
registered, and counselled me to stay quietly 
where I was till he should give me the word 
to move. I had taken along with me a small 
valise, a knapsack, which I carried on my 
shoulders, and in the bag of my railway rug 
the whole of Bancroft's History of the United 
States, in six fat volumes. It was as much 
as I could carry with convenience even for 
short distances, but it insured me plenty of 



Across the Plains 3 

clothing, and the valise was at that moment, and 
often after, useful for a stool. I am sure I sat 
for an hour in the baggage-room, and wretched 
enough it was ; yet, when at last the word was 
passed to me and I picked up my bundles and 
got under way, it was only to exchange discom- 
fort for downright misery and danger. 

I followed the porters into a long shed 
reaching downhill from West Street to the 
river. It was dark, the wind blew clean 
through it from end to end ; and here I found 
a great block of passengers and baggage, 
hundreds of one and tons of the other. I 
feel I shall have a difficulty to make myself 
believed ; and certainly the scene must have 
been exceptional, for it was too dangerous for 
daily repetition. It was a tight jam ; there 
was no fair way through the mingled mass of 
brute and living obstruction. Into the upper 
skirts of the crowd porters, infuriated by hurry 
and overwork, clove their way with shouts. I 
may say that we stood like sheep, and that 
the porters charged among us like so many 
maddened sheep-dogs ; and I believe these men 
were no longer answerable for their acts. It 



4 Across the Plains 

mattered not what they were carrying, they 
drove straight into the press, and when they 
could get no farther, blindly discharged their 
barrowful. With my own hand, for instance, 
I saved the life of a child as it sat upon its 
mother's knee, she sitting on a box ; and since I 
heard of no accident, I must suppose that there 
were many similar interpositions in the course 
of the evening. It will give some idea of the 
state of mind to which we were reduced if I 
tell you that neither the porter nor the mother 
of the child paid the least attention to my act. 
It was not till some time after that I under- 
stood what I had done myself, for to ward off 
heavy boxes seemed at the moment a natural 
incident of human life. Cold, wet, clamour, 
dead opposition to progress, such as one en- 
counters in an evil dream, had utterly daunted 
the spirits. We had accepted this purgatory 
as a child accepts the conditions of the world. 
For my part, I shivered a little, and my back 
ached wearily ; but I believe I had neither a 
hope nor a fear, and all the activities of my 
nature had become tributary to one massive 
sensation of discomfort. 



Across the Plains 5 

At length, and after how long an interval 
I hesitate to guess, the crowd began to move, 
heavily straining through itself. About the 
same time some lamps were lighted, and threw 
a sudden flare over the shed. We were being 
filtered out into the river boat for Jersey City. 
You may imagine how slowly this filtering 
proceeded, through the dense, choking crush, 
every one overladen with packages or children, 
and yet under the necessity of fishing out his 
ticket by the way; but it ended at length for 
me, and I found myself on deck under a flimsy 
awning and with a trifle of elbow-room to 
stretch and breathe in. This was on the star- 
board; for the bulk of the emigrants stuck 
hopelessly on the port side, by which we had 
entered. In vain the seamen shouted to them 
to move on, and threatened them with ship- 
wreck. These poor people were under a spell 
of stupor, and did not stir a foot. It rained as 
heavily as ever, but the wind now came in 
sudden claps and capfuls, not without danger 
to a boat so badly ballasted as ours; and we 
crept over the river in the darkness, trailing 
one paddle in the water like a wounded duck, 



6 Across the Plains 

and passed ever and again by huge, illuminated 
steamers running many knots, and heralding 
their approach by strains of music. The con- 
trast between these pleasure embarkations and 
our own grim vessel, with her list to port and 
her freight of wet and silent emigrants, was of 
that glaring description which we count too 
obvious for the purposes of art. 

The landing at Jersey City was done in a 
stampede. I had a fixed sense of calamity, 
and to judge by conduct, the same persuasion 
was common to us all. A panic selfishness, 
like that produced by fear, presided over the 
disorder of our landing. People pushed, and 
elbowed, and ran, the families following how 
they could. Children fell, and were picked up 
to be rewarded by a blow. One child, who 
had lost her parents, screamed steadily and 
with increasing shrillness, as though verging 
towards a fit; an official kept her by him, but 
no one else seemed so much as to remark her 
distress; and I am ashamed to say that I ran 
among the rest. I was so weary that I had 
twice to make a halt and set down my bundles 
in the hundred yards or so between the pier 



Across the Plains 7 

and the railway station, so that I was quite 
wet by the time that I got under cover. 
There was no waiting-room, no refreshment 
room ; the cars were locked J and for at least 
another hour, or so it seemed, we had to camp 
upon the draughty, gaslit platform. I sat on 
my valise, too crushed to observe my neigh- 
bours; but as they were all cold, and wet, 
and weary, and driven stupidly crazy by the 
mismanagement to which we had been sub- 
jected, I believe they can have been no 
happier than myself. I bought half a dozen 
oranges from a boy, for oranges and nuts 
were the only refection to be had. As only 
two of them had even a pretence of juice, I 
threw the other four under the cars, and 
beheld, as in a dream, grown people and 
children groping on the track after my leav- 
ings. 

At last we were admitted into the cars, 
utterly dejected, and far from dry. For my 
own part, I got out a clothes-brush, and 
brushed my trousers as hard as I could till I 
had dried them and warmed my blood into 
the bargain ; but no one else, except my next 



8 Across the Plains 

neighbour to whom I lent the brush, appeared 
to take the least precaution. As they were, 
they composed themselves to sleep. I had 
seen the lights of Philadelphia, and been twice 
ordered to change carriages and twice counter- 
manded, before I allowed myself to follow their 
example. 

Tuesday. — When I awoke, it was already 
day ; the train was standing idle ; I was in the 
last carriage, and, seeing some others strolling 
to and fro about the lines, I opened the door 
and stepped forth, as from a caravan by the 
wayside. We were near no station, nor even, 
as far as I could see, within reach of any signal. 
A green, open, undulating country stretched 
away upon all sides. Locust trees and a single 
field of Indian corn gave it a foreign grace and 
interest ; but the contours of the land were soft 
and English. It was not quite England, neither 
was it quite France ; yet like enough either to 
seem natural in my eyes. And it was in the 
sky, and not upon the earth, that I was surprised 
to find a change. Explain it how you may, 
and for my part I cannot explain it at all, the 
sun rises with a different splendour in America 



Across the Plains 9 

and Europe. There is more clear gold and 
scarlet in our old country mornings ; more 
purple, brown, and smoky orange in those of 
the new. It may be from habit, but to me the 
coming of day is less fresh and inspiriting in 
the latter; it has a duskier glory, and more 
nearly resembles sunset; it seems to fit some 
subsequential, evening epoch of the world, as 
though America were in fact, and not merely in 
fancy, farther from the orient of Aurora and 
the springs of day. I thought so then, by the 
railroad side in Pennsylvania, and I have 
thought so a dozen times since in far distant 
parts of the continent. If it be an illusion it 
is one very deeply rooted, and in which my 
eyesight is accomplice. 

Soon after a train whisked by, announcing 
and accompanying its passage by the swift 
beating of a sort of chapel bell upon the engine ; 
and as it was for this we had been waiting, we 
were summoned by the cry of ' All aboard ! ' 
and went on again upon our way. The whole 
line, it appeared, was topsy-turvy ; an accident 
at midnight having thrown all the traffic hours 
into arrear. We paid for this in the flesh, for 



io Across the Plains 

we had no meals all that day. Fruit we could 
buy upon the cars ; and now and then we had 
a few minutes at some station with a meagre 
show of rolls and sandwiches for sale ; but we 
were so many and so ravenous that, though I 
tried at every opportunity, the coffee was always 
exhausted before I could elbow my way to the 
counter. 

Our American sunrise had ushered in a 
noble summer's day. There was not a cloud ; 
the sunshine was baking; yet in the woody 
river valleys among which we wound our way, 
the atmosphere preserved a sparkling freshness 
till late in the afternoon. It had an inland 
sweetness and variety to one newly from the 
sea; it smelt of woods, rivers, and the delved 
earth. These, though in so far a country, were 
airs from home. I stood on the platform by 
the hour; and as I saw, one after another, 
pleasant villages, carts upon the highway and 
fishers by the stream, and heard cockcrows and 
cheery voices in the distance, and beheld the 
sun, no longer shining blankly on the plains of 
ocean, but striking among shapely hills and his 
light dispersed and coloured by a thousand 



Across the Plains 1 1 

accidents of form and surface, I began to exult 
with myself upon this rise in life like a man 
who had come into a rich estate. And when I 
had asked the name of a river from the brakes- 
man, and heard that it was called the Susque- 
hanna, the beauty of the name seemed to be 
part and parcel of the beauty of the land. As 
when Adam with divine fitness named the 
creatures, so this word Susquehanna was at 
once accepted by the fancy. That was the 
name, as no other could be, for that shining 
river and desirable valley. 

None can care for literature in itself who 
do not take a special pleasure in the sound of 
names ; and there is no part of the world where 
nomenclature is so rich, poetical, humorous, and 
picturesque as the United States of America. 
All times, races, and languages have brought 
their contribution. Pekin is in the same State 
with Euclid, with Bellefontaine, and with San- 
dusky. Chelsea, with its London associations 
of red brick, Sloane Square, and the King's 
Road, is own suburb to stately and primeval 
Memphis; there they have their seat, translated 
names of cities, where the Mississippi runs by 



12 Across the Plains 

Tennessee and Arkansas ; * and both, while I 
was crossing the continent, lay, watched by 
armed men, in the horror and isolation of a 
plague. Old, red Manhattan lies, like an Indian 
arrowhead under a steam factory, below anglified 
New York. The names of the States and Ter- 
ritories themselves form a chorus of sweet and 
most romantic vocables : Delaware, Ohio, In- 
diana, Florida, Dakota, Iowa, Wyoming, Min- 
nesota, and the Carolinas ; there are few poems 
with a nobler music for the ear: a songful, 
tuneful land ; and if the new Homer shall arise 
from the Western continent, his verse will be 
enriched, his pages sing spontaneously, with the 
names of states and cities that would strike the 
fancy in a business circular. 

Late in the evening we were landed in a 
waiting-room at Pittsburg. I had now under 
my charge a young and sprightly Dutch widow 
with her children ; these I was to watch over 
providentially for a certain distance farther on 
the way ; but as I found she was furnished with 
a basket of eatables, I left her in the waiting- 
room to seek a dinner for myself. 

1 Please pronounce Arkansavv, with the accent on the first. 



Across the Plains 13 

I mention this meal, not only because it was 
the first of which I had partaken for about 
thirty hours, but because it was the means of 
my first introduction to a coloured gentleman. 
He did me the honour to wait upon me after a 
fashion, while I was eating; and with every 
word, look, and gesture marched me farther 
into the country of surprise. He was indeed 
strikingly unlike the negroes of Mrs. Beecher 
Stowe, or the Christy Minstrels of my youth. 
Imagine a gentleman, certainly somewhat dark, 
but of a pleasant warm hue, speaking English 
with a slight and rather odd foreign accent, 
every inch a man of the world, and armed with 
manners so patronisingly superior that I am at 
a loss to name their parallel in England. A 
butler perhaps rides as high over the unbutlered, 
but then he sets you right with a reserve and a 
sort of sighing patience which one is often 
moved to admire. And again, the abstract 
butler never stoops to familiarity. But the 
coloured gentleman will pass you a wink at a 
time ; he is familiar like an upper form boy to 
a fag ; he unbends to you like Prince Hal with 
Poins and Falstaff. He makes himself at home 



14 Across the Plains 

and welcome. Indeed, I may say, this waiter 
behaved himself to me throughout that supper 
much as, with us, a young, free, and not very 
self-respecting master might behave to a good- 
looking chambermaid. I had come prepared to 
pity the poor negro, to put him at his ease, to 
prove in a thousand condescensions that I was 
no sharer in the prejudice of race ; but I assure 
you I put my patronage away for another 
occasion, and had the grace to be pleased with 
that result. 

Seeing he was a very honest fellow, I con- 
sulted him upon a point of etiquette : if one 
should offer to tip the American waiter ? 
Certainly not, he told me. Never. It would 
not do. They considered themselves too highly 
to accept. They would even resent the offer. 
As for him and me, we had enjoyed a very 
pleasant conversation; he, in particular, had 
found much pleasure in my society ; I was a 
stranger ; this was exactly one of those rare 
conjunctures. . . . Without being very clear 
seeing, I can still perceive the sun at noonday ; 
and the coloured gentleman deftly pocketed a 
quarter. 



Across the Plains 15 

Wednesday. — A little after midnight I con- 
voyed my widow and orphans on board the 
train ; and morning found us far into Ohio. 
This had early been a favourite home of my 
imagination ; I have played at being in Ohio 
by the week, and enjoyed some capital sport 
there with a dummy gun, my person being still 
unbreeched. My preference was founded on a 
work which appeared in CasseWs Family Paper, 
and was read aloud to me by my nurse. It 
narrated the doings of one Custaloga, an Indian 
brave, who, in the last chapter, very obligingly 
washed the paint off his face and became Sir 
Reginald Somebody-or-other ; a trick I never 
forgave him. The idea of a man being an 
Indian brave, and then giving that up to be a 
baronet, was one which my mind rejected. It 
offended verisimilitude, like the pretended anx- 
iety of Robinson Crusoe and others to escape 
from uninhabited islands. 

But Ohio was not at all as I had pictured 
it. We were now on those great plains which 
stretch unbroken to the Rocky Mountains. 
The country was flat like Holland, but far from 
being dull. All through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 



1 6 Across the Plains 

and Iowa, or for as much as I saw of them from 
the train and in my waking moments, it was 
rich and various, and breathed an elegance 
peculiar to itself. The tall corn pleased the 
eye ; the trees were graceful in themselves, and 
framed the plain into long, aerial vistas; and 
the clean, bright, gardened townships spoke of 
country fare and pleasant summer evenings on 
the stoop. It was a sort of flat paradise ; but, 
I am afraid, not unfrequented by the devil. 
That morning dawned with such a freezing 
chill as I have rarely felt ; a chill that was not 
perhaps so measurable by instrument, as it 
struck home upon the heart and seemed to 
travel with the blood. Day came in with a 
shudder. White mists lay thinly over the sur- 
face of the plain, as we see them more often on 
a lake ; and though the sun had soon dispersed 
and drunk them up, leaving an atmosphere of 
fever heat and crystal pureness from horizon to 
horizon, the mists had still been there, and we 
knew that this paradise was haunted by killing 
damps and foul malaria. The fences along the 
line bore but two descriptions of advertisement ; 
one to recommend tobaccos, and the other to 



Across the Plains 17 

vaunt remedies against the ague. At the point 
of day, and while we were all in the grasp of 
that first chill, a native of the state, who had 
got in at some way station, pronounced it, with 
a doctoral air, ' a fever and ague morning.' 

The Dutch widow was a person of some 
character. She had conceived at first sight 
a great aversion for the present writer, which 
she was at no pains to conceal. But being a 
woman of a practical spirit, she made no 
difficulty about accepting my attentions, and 
encouraged me to buy her children fruits and 
candies, to carry all her parcels, and even to 
sleep upon the floor that she might profit by 
my empty seat. Nay, she was such a rattle by 
nature, and so powerfully moved to autobio- 
graphical talk, that she was forced, for want of 
a better, to take me into confidence and tell me 
the story of her life. I heard about her late 
husband, who seemed to have made his chief 
impression by taking her out pleasuring on 
Sundays. I could tell you her prospects, her 
hopes, the amount of her fortune, the cost of 
her housekeeping by the week, and a variety of 
particular matters that are not usually disclosed 



1 8 Across the Plains 

except to friends. At one station, she shook 
up her children to look at a man on the plat- 
form and say if he were not like Mr. Z. ; 
while to me she explained how she had been 
keeping company with this Mr. Z., how far 
matters had proceeded, and how it was because 
of his desistance that she was now travelling to 
the west. Then, when I was thus put in 
possession of the facts, she asked my judgment 
on that type of manly beauty. I admired it 
to her heart's content. She was not, I think, 
remarkably veracious in talk, but broidered as 
fancy prompted, and built castles in the air out 
of her past ; yet she had that sort of candour, 
to keep me, in spite of all these confidences, 
steadily aware of her aversion. Her parting 
words were ingeniously honest. ' I am sure,' 
said she, ' we all ought to be very much obliged 
to you.' I cannot pretend that she put me at 
my ease ; but I had a certain respect for such a 
genuine dislike. A poor nature would have 
slipped, in the course of these familiarities, into 
a sort of worthless toleration for me. 

We reached Chicago in the evening. I was 
turned out of the cars, bundled into an omnibus, 



Across the Plains 19 

and driven off through the streets to the station 
of a different railroad. Chicago seemed a great 
and gloomy city. I remember having sub- 
scribed, let us say sixpence, towards its restora- 
tion at the period of the fire ; and now when I 
beheld street after street of ponderous houses 
and crowds of comfortable burghers, I thought 
it would be a graceful act for the corporation 
to refund that sixpence, or, at the least, to 
entertain me to a cheerful dinner. But there 
was no word of restitution. I was that city's 
benefactor, yet I was received in a third-class 
waiting-room, and the best dinner I could get 
was a dish of ham and eggs at my own 
expense. 

I can safely say, I have never been so dog- 
tired as that night in Chicago. When it was 
time to start, I descended the platform like a 
man in a dream. It was a long train, lighted 
from end to end ; and car after car, as I came 
up with it, was not only filled but overflowing. 
My valise, my knapsack, my rug, with those 
six ponderous tomes of Bancroft, weighed me 
double; I was hot, feverish, painfully athirst; 
and there was a great darkness over me, an 



20 Across the Plains 

internal darkness, not to be dispelled by gas. 
When at last I found an empty bench, I sank 
into it like a bundle of rags, the world seemed 
to swim away into the distance, and my con- 
sciousness dwindled within me to a mere pin's 
head, like a taper on a foggy night. 

When I came a little more to myself, I 
found that there had sat down beside me a very 
cheerful, rosy little German gentleman, some- 
what gone in drink, who was talking away to 
me, nineteen to the dozen, as they say. I 
did my best to keep up the conversation ; for 
it seemed to me dimly as if something depended 
upon that. I heard him relate, among many 
other things, that there were pickpockets on the 
train, who had already robbed a man of forty 
dollars and a return ticket; but though I 
caught the words, I do not think I properly 
understood the sense until next morning; and 
I believe I replied at the time that I was very 
glad to hear it. What else he talked about I 
have no guess ; I remember a gabbling sound of 
words, his profuse gesticulation, and his smile, 
which was highly explanatory; but no more. 
And I suppose I must have shown my confusion 



Across the Plains 21 

very plainly ; for, first, I saw him knit his brows 
at me like one who has conceived a doubt; 
next, he tried me in German, supposing perhaps 
that I was unfamiliar with the English tongue ; 
and finally, in despair, he rose and left me. I 
felt chagrined ; but my fatigue was too crushing 
for delay, and, stretching myself as far as that 
was possible upon the bench, I was received at 
once into a dreamless stupor. 

The little German gentleman was only 
going a little way into the suburbs after a diner 
fin, and was bent on entertainment while the 
journey lasted. Having failed with me, he 
pitched next upon another emigrant, who had 
come through from Canada, and was not one 
jot less weary than myself. Nay, even in a 
natural state, as I found next morning when 
we scraped acquaintance, he was a heavy, un- 
communicative man. After trying him on 
different topics, it appears that the little German 
gentleman flounced into a temper, swore an 
oath or two, and departed from that car in 
quest of livelier society. Poor little gentleman ! 
I suppose he thought an emigrant should be a 
rollicking, free-hearted blade, with a flask of 



22 Across the Plains 

foreign brandy and a long, comical story to 
beguile the moments of digestion. 

Thursday. — I suppose there must be a cycle 
in the fatigue of travelling, for when I awoke 
next morning, I was entirely renewed in spirits 
and ate a hearty breakfast of porridge, with 
sweet milk, and coffee and hot cakes, at Burling- 
ton upon the Mississippi. Another long day's 
ride followed, with but one feature worthy of 
remark. At a place called Creston, a drunken 
man got in. He was aggressively friendly, but, 
according to English notions, not at all unpre- 
sentable upon a train. For one stage he eluded 
the notice of the officials; but just as we were 
beginning to move out of the next station, 
Cromwell by name, by came the conductor. 
There was a word or two of talk ; and then the 
official had the man by the shoulders, twitched 
him from his seat, marched him through the 
car, and sent him flying on to the track. It 
was done in three motions, as exact as a piece 
of drill. The train was still moving slowly, 
although beginning to mend her pace, and the 
drunkard got his feet without a fall. He 
carried a red bundle, though not so red as his 



Across the Plains 23 

cheeks; and he shook this menacingly in the 
air with one hand, while the other stole behind 
him to the region of the kidneys. It was 
the first indication that I had come among 
revolvers, and I observed it with some emotion. 
The conductor stood on the steps with one 
hand on his hip, looking back at him; and 
perhaps this attitude imposed upon the crea- 
ture, for he turned without further ado, and 
went off staggering along the track towards 
Cromwell, followed by a peal of laughter 
from the cars. They were speaking English all 
about me, but I knew I was in a foreign land. 

Twenty minutes before nine that night, we 
were deposited at the Pacific Transfer Station 
near Council Bluffs, on the eastern bank of 
the Missouri river. Here we were to stay the 
night at a kind of caravanserai, set apart for 
emigrants. But I gave way to a thirst for 
luxury, separated myself from my companions, 
and marched with my effects into the Union 
Pacific Hotel. A white clerk and a coloured 
gentleman whom, in my plain European way, 
I should call the boots, were installed behind 
a counter like bank tellers. They took my 



24 Across the Plains 

name, assigned me a number, and proceeded to 
deal with my packages. And here came the 
tug of war. I wished to give up my packages 
into safe keeping ; but I did not wish to go to 
bed. And this, it appeared, was impossible in 
an American hotel. 

It was, of course, some inane misunder- 
standing, and sprang from my unfamiliarity 
with the language. For although two nations 
use the same words and read the same books, 
intercourse is not conducted by the diction- 
ary. The business of life is not carried 
on by words, but in set phrases, each with 
a special and almost a slang signification. 
Some international obscurity prevailed between 
me and the coloured gentleman at Council 
Bluffs; so that what I was asking, which 
seemed very natural to me, appeared to him 
a monstrous exigency. He refused, and that 
with the plainness of the West. This American 
manner of conducting matters of business is, 
at first, highly unpalatable to the European. 
When we approach a man in the way of his 
calling, and for those services by which he 
earns his bread, we consider him for the time 



Across the Plains 25 

being our hired servant. But in the American 
opinion, two gentlemen meet and have a 
friendly talk with a view to exchanging favours 
if they shall agree to please. I know not which 
is the more convenient, nor even which is the 
more truly courteous. The English stiffness 
unfortunately tends to be continued after the 
particular transaction is at an end, and thus 
favours class separations. But on the other 
hand, these equalitarian plainnesses leave an 
open field for the insolence of Jack-in-office. 

I was nettled by the coloured gentleman's 
refusal, and unbuttoned my wrath under the 
similitude of ironical submission. I knew 
nothing, I said, of the ways of American 
hotels ; but I had no desire to give trouble. If 
there was nothing for it but to get to bed 
immediately, let him say the word, and though 
it was not my habit, I should cheerfully obey. 

He burst into a shout of laughter. ' Ah ! ' 
said he, 'you do not know about America. 
They are fine people in America. Oh ! you 
will like them very well. But you mustn't get 
mad. I know what you want. You come 
along with me.' 



26 Across the Plains 

And issuing from behind the counter, and 
taking me by the arm like an old acquaintance, 
he led me to the bar of the hotel. 

* There,' said he, pushing me from him by 
the shoulder, ' go and have a drink ! ' 



THE EMIGRANT TRAIN 

All this while I had been travelling by 
mixed trains, where I might meet with Dutch 
widows and little German gentry fresh from 
table. I had been but a latent emigrant ; now 
I was to be branded once more, and put apart 
with my fellows. It was about two in the 
afternoon of Friday that I found myself in 
front of the Emigrant House, with more than 
a hundred others, to be sorted and boxed for 
the journey. A white-haired official, with a 
stick under one arm, and a list in the other 
hand, stood apart in front of us, and called 
name after name in the tone of a command. 
At each name you would see a family gather 
up its brats and bundles and run for the hind- 
most of the three cars that stood awaiting us, 
and I soon concluded that this was to be set 



Across the Plains 27 

apart for the women and children. The second 
or central car, it turned out, was devoted to men 
travelling alone, and the third to the Chinese. 
The official was easily moved to anger at the 
least delay ; but the emigrants were both quick 
at answering their names, and speedy in getting 
themselves and their effects on board. 

The families once housed, we men carried 
the second car without ceremony by simultane- 
ous assault. I suppose the reader has some 
notion of an American railroad-car, that long, 
narrow wooden box, like a flat-roofed Noah's ark, 
with a stove and a convenience, one at either 
end, a passage down the middle, and transverse 
benches upon either hand. Those destined for 
emigrants on the Union Pacific are only re- 
markable for their extreme plainness, nothing 
but wood entering in any part into their con- 
stitution, and for the usual inefficacy of the 
lamps, which often went out and shed but a 
dying glimmer even while they burned. The 
benches are too short for anything but a young 
child. Where there is scarce elbow-room for 
two to sit, there will not be space enough for 
one to lie. Hence the company, or rather, as 



28 Across the Plains 

it appears from certain bills about the Transfer 
Station, the company's servants, have conceived 
a plan for the better accommodation of trav- 
ellers. They prevail on every two to chum 
together. To each of the chums they sell a 
board and three square cushions stuffed with 
straw, and covered with thin cotton. The 
benches can be made to face each other in 
pairs, for the backs are reversible. On the 
approach of night the boards are laid from 
bench to bench, making a couch wide enough 
for two, and long enough for a man of the mid- 
dle height ; and the chums lie down side by side 
upon the cushions with the head to the conduc- 
tor's van and the feet to the engine. When the 
train is full, of course this plan is impossible, 
for there must not be more than one to every 
bench, neither can it be carried out unless the 
chums agree. It was to bring about this last 
condition that our white-haired official now be- 
stirred himself. He made a most active mas- 
ter of ceremonies, introducing likely couples, 
and even guaranteeing the amiability and 
honesty of each. The greater the number of 
happy couples the better for his pocket, for it 



Across the Plains 29 

was he who sold the raw material of the beds. 
His price for one board and three straw cush- 
ions began with two dollars and a half; but 
before the train left, and, I am sorry to say, 
long after I had purchased mine, it had fallen 
to one dollar and a half. 

The match-maker had a difficulty with me; 
perhaps, like some ladies, I showed myself too 
eager for union at any price ; but certainly the 
first who was picked out to be my bedfellow, 
declined the honour without thanks. He was 
an old, heavy, slow-spoken man, I think from 
Yankeeland, looked me all over with great 
timidity, and then began to excuse himself in 
broken phrases. He didn't know the young 
man, he said. The young man might be very 
honest, but how was he to know that ? There 
was another young man whom he had met 
already in the train ; he guessed he was honest, 
and would prefer to chum with him upon the 
whole. All this without any sort of excuse, 
as though I had been inanimate or absent. I 
began to tremble lest everyone should refuse 
my company, and I be left rejected. But the 
next in turn was a tall, strapping, long-limbed, 



30 Across the Plains 

small-headed, curly-haired Pennsylvania Dutch' 
man, with a soldierly smartness in his manner. 
To be exact, he had acquired it in the navy. But 
that was all one ; he had at least been trained 
to desperate resolves, so he accepted the match, 
and the white-haired swindler pronounced the 
connubial benediction, and pocketed his fees. 

The rest of the afternoon was spent in 
making up the train. I am afraid to say how 
many baggage-waggons followed the engine, 
certainly a score ; then came the Chinese, 
then we, then the families, and the rear was 
brought up by the conductor in what, if I 
have it rightly, is called his caboose. The 
class to which I belonged was of course far 
the largest, and we ran over, so to speak, to 
both sides ; so that there were some Caucasians 
among the Chinamen, and some bachelors 
among the families. But our own car was 
pure from admixture, save for one little boy 
of eight or nine, who had the whooping- 
cough. At last, about six, the long train 
crawled out of the Transfer Station and 
across the wide Missouri river to Omaha, 
westward bound. 



Across the Plains 31 

It was a troubled uncomfortable evening in 
the cars. There was thunder in the air, which 
helped to keep us restless. A man played 
many airs upon the cornet, and none of them 
were much attended to, until he came to 
1 Home, sweet home.' It was truly strange 
to note how the talk ceased at that, and the 
faces began to lengthen. I have no idea 
whether musically this air is to be considered 
good or bad; but it belongs to that class of 
art which may be best described as a brutal 
assault upon the feelings. Pathos must be 
relieved by dignity of treatment. If you 
wallow naked in the pathetic, like the author 
of ■ Home, sweet home,' you make your hearers 
weep in an unmanly fashion ; and even while 
yet they are moved, they despise themselves 
and hate the occasion of their weakness. 
It did not come to tears that night, for the 
experiment was interrupted. An elderly, hard- 
looking man, with a goatee beard and about 
as much appearance of sentiment as you would 
expect from a retired slaver, turned with a 
start and bade the performer stop that ' damned 
thing.* 'I've heard about enough of that,' 



32 Across the Plains 

he added ; ' give us something about the good 
country we're going to.' A murmur of adhe- 
sion ran round the car; the performer took 
the instrument from his lips, laughed and 
nodded, and then struck into a dancing meas- 
ure ; and, like a new Timotheus, stilled imme- 
diately the emotion he had raised. 

The day faded ; the lamps were lit ; a 
party of wild young men, who got off next 
evening at North Platte, stood together on 
the stern platform, singing 'The Sweet By- 
and-bye ' with very tuneful voices ; the chums 
began to put up their beds; and it seemed 
as if the business of the day were at an end. 
But it was not so ; for, the train stopping at 
some station, the cars were instantly thronged 
with the natives, wives and fathers, young men 
and maidens, some of them in little more than 
nightgear, some with stable lanterns, and all 
offering beds for sale. Their charge began 
with twenty-five cents a cushion, but fell, be- 
fore the train went on again, to fifteen, with 
the bed-board gratis, or less than one-fifth of 
what I had paid for mine at the Transfer. This 



Across the Plains 33 

is my contribution to the economy of future 
emigrants. 

A great personage on an American train is 
the newsboy. He sells books (such books !), 
papers, fruit, lollipops, and cigars; and on 
emigrant journeys, soap, towels, tin washing 
dishes, tin coffee pitchers, coffee, tea, sugar, 
and tinned eatables, mostly hash or beans and 
bacon. Early next morning the newsboy went 
around the cars, and chumming on a more 
extended principle became the order of the 
hour. It requires but a copartnery of two to 
manage beds; but washing and eating can be 
carried on most economically by a syndicate of 
three. I myself entered a little after sunrise 
into articles of agreement, and became one of 
the firm of Pennsylvania, Shakespeare, and 
Dubuque. Shakespeare was my own nick- 
name on the cars; Pennsylvania that of my 
bedfellow ; and Dubuque, the name of a place 
in the State of Iowa, that of an amiable young 
fellow going west to cure an asthma, and 
retarding his recovery by incessantly chewing 
or smoking, and sometimes chewing and smok- 
ing together. I have never seen tobacco so 



34 Across the Plains 

sillily abused. Shakespeare bought a tin 
washing-dish, Dubuque a towel, and Penn- 
sylvania a brick of soap. The partners used 
these instruments, one after another, according 
to the order of their first awaking ; and when 
the firm had finished there was no want of 
borrowers. Each filled the tin dish at the 
water filter opposite the stove, and retired with 
the whole stock in trade to the platform of the 
car. There he knelt down, supporting himself 
by a shoulder against the woodwork or one 
elbow crooked about the railing, and made a 
shift to wash his face and neck and hands; a 
cold, an insufficient, and, if the train is moving 
rapidly, a somewhat dangerous toilet. 

On a similar division of expense, the firm 
of Pennsylvania, Shakespeare, and Dubuque 
supplied themselves with coffee, sugar, and 
necessary vessels; and their operations are a 
type of what went on through all the cars. 
Before the sun was up the stove would be 
brightly burning; at the first station the 
natives would come on board with milk and 
eggs and coffee cakes; and soon from end to 
end the car would be filled with little parties 



Across the Plains 35 

breakfasting upon the bed-boards. It was the 
pleasantest hour of the day. 

There were meals to be had, however, by 
the wayside: a breakfast in the morning, a 
dinner somewhere between eleven and two, 
and supper from five to eight or nine at night. 
We had rarely less than twenty minutes for 
each; and if we had not spent many another 
twenty minutes waiting for some express upon 
a side track among miles of desert, we might 
have taken an hour to each repast and arrived 
at San Francisco up to time. For haste is not 
the foible of an emigrant train. It gets through 
on sufferance, running the gauntlet among its 
more considerable brethren; should there be a 
block, it is unhesitatingly sacrificed; and they 
cannot, in consequence, predict the length of 
the passage within a day or so. Civility is the 
main comfort that you miss. Equality, though 
conceived very largely in America, does not 
extend so low down as to an emigrant. Thus 
in all other trains, a warning cry of 'All 
aboard ! ' recalls the passengers to take their 
seats; but as soon as I was alone with emi- 
grants, and from the Transfer all the way 



36 Across the Plains 

to San Francisco, I found this ceremony 
was pretermitted; the train stole from the 
station without note of warning, and you had 
to keep an eye upon it even while you ate. 
The annoyance is considerable, and the dis- 
respect both wanton and petty. 

Many conductors, again, will hold no com- 
munication with an emigrant. I asked a con- 
ductor one day at what time the train would 
stop for dinner; as he made no answer I 
repeated the question, with a like result ; a 
third time I returned to the charge, and then 
Jack-in-office looked me coolly in the face for 
several seconds and turned ostentatiously away. 
I believe he was half ashamed of his brutality ; 
for when another person made the same inquiry, 
although he still refused the information, he 
condescended to answer, and even to justify his 
reticence in a voice loud enough for me to hear. 
It was, he said, his principle not to tell people 
where they were to dine ; for one answer led to 
many other questions, as what o'clock it was ? 
or, how soon should we be there ? and he could 
not afford to be eternally worried. 

As you are thus cut off from the superior 



Across the Plains 37 

authorities, a great deal of your comfort de- 
pends on the character of the newsboy. He 
has it in his power indefinitely to better and 
brighten the emigrant's lot. The newsboy with 
whom we started from the Transfer was a dark, 
bullying, contemptuous, insolent scoundrel, who 
treated us like dogs. Indeed, in his case, 
matters came nearly to a fight. It happened 
thus : he was going his rounds through the cars 
with some commodities for sale, and coming to 
a party who were at Seven-up or Cascino (our 
two games), upon a bed-board, slung down a 
cigar-box in the middle of the cards, knocking 
one man's hand to the floor. It was the last 
straw. In a moment the whole party were 
upon their feet, the cigars were upset, and he 
was ordered to ' get out of that directly, or he 
would get more than he reckoned for.' The 
fellow grumbled and muttered, but ended by 
making off, and was less openly insulting in the 
future. On the other hand, the lad who rode 
with us in this capacity from Ogden to Sacra- 
mento made himself the friend of all, and helped 
us with information, attention, assistance, and 
a kind countenance. He told us where and 



38 Across the Plains 

when we should have our meals, and how long 
the train would stop ; kept seats at table for 
those who were delayed, and watched that we 
should neither be left behind nor yet unneces- 
sarily hurried. You, who live at home at ease, 
can hardly realise the greatness of this service, 
even had it stood alone. When I think of that 
lad coming and going, train after train, with his 
bright face and civil words, I see how easily a 
good man may become the benefactor of his 
kind. Perhaps he is discontented with himself, 
perhaps troubled with ambitions ; why, if he 
but knew it, he is a hero of the old Greek 
stamp ; and while he thinks he is only earning 
a profit of a few cents, and that perhaps exorbi- 
tant, he is doing a man's work, and bettering 
the world. 

I must tell here an experience of mine with 
another newsboy. I tell it because it gives so 
good an example of that uncivil kindness of the 
American, which is perhaps their most bewil- 
dering character to one newly landed. It was 
immediately after I had left the emigrant train; 
and I am told I looked like a man at death's 
door, so much had this long journey shaken me. 



Across the Plains 39 

I sat at the end of a car, and the catch being 
broken, and myself feverish and sick, I had to 
hold the door open with my foot for the sake 
of air. In this attitude my leg debarred the 
newsboy from his box of merchandise. I made 
haste to let him pass when I observed that he 
was coming ; but I was busy with a book, and 
so once or twice he came upon me unawares. 
On these occasions he most rudely struck my 
foot aside ; and though I myself apologised, as 
if to show him the way, he answered me never 
a word. I chafed furiously, and I fear the next 
time it would have come to words. But suddenly 
I felt a touch upon my shoulder, and a large 
juicy pear was put into my hand. It was 
the newsboy, who had observed that I was 
looking ill and so made me this present 
out of a tender heart. For the rest of the 
journey I was petted like a sick child ; he lent 
me newspapers, thus depriving himself of his 
legitimate profit on their sale, and came re- 
peatedly to sit by me and cheer me up. 



40 Across the Plains 

THE PLAINS OF NEBRASKA 

It had thundered on the Friday night, but 
the sun rose on Saturday without a cloud. We 
were at sea — there is no other adequate expres- 
sion — on the plains of Nebraska. I made my 
observatory on the top of a fruit-waggon, and 
sat by the hour upon that perch to spy about 
me, and to spy in vain for something new. It 
was a world almost without a feature ; an 
empty sky, an empty earth ; front and back, 
the line of railway stretched from horizon to 
horizon, like a cue across a billiard-board ; on 
either hand, the green plain ran till it touched 
the skirts of heaven. Along the track innumer- 
able wild sunflowers, no bigger than a crown- 
piece, bloomed in a continuous flower-bed ; 
grazing beasts were seen upon the prairie at all 
degrees of distance and diminution ; and now 
and again we might perceive a few dots beside 
the railroad which grew more and more distinct 
as we drew nearer till they turned into wooden 
cabins, and then dwindled and dwindled in our 
wake until they melted into their surroundings, 
and we were once more alone upon the billiard- 



Across the Plains 41 

board. The train toiled over this infinity like 
a snail ; and being the one thing moving, it was 
wonderful what huge proportions it began to 
assume in our regard. It seemed miles in 
length, and either end of it within but a step of 
the horizon. Even my own body or my own 
head seemed a great thing in that emptiness. 
I note the feeling the more readily as it is the 
contrary of what I have read of in the experi- 
ence of others. Day and night, above the roar 
of the train, our ears were kept busy with the 
incessant chirp of grasshoppers — a noise like 
the winding up of countless clocks and watches, 
which began after a while to seem proper to 
that land. 

To one hurrying through by steam there was 
a certain exhilaration in this spacious vacancy, 
this greatness of the air, this discovery of the 
whole arch of heaven, this straight, unbroken, 
prison-line of the horizon. Yet one could not 
but reflect upon the weariness of those who 
passed by there in old days, at the foot's pace 
of oxen, painfully urging their teams, and with 
no landmark but that unattainable evening sun 
for which they steered, and which daily fled 



42 Across the Plains 

them by an equal stride. They had nothing, it 
would seem, to overtake; nothing by which 
to reckon their advance ; no sight for repose or 
for encouragement ; but stage after stage, only 
the dead green waste under foot, and the mock- 
ing, fugitive horizon. But the eye, as I have 
been told, found differences even here ; and at 
the worst the emigrant came, by perseverance, 
to the end of his toil. It is the settlers, after 
all, at whom we have a right to marvel. Our 
consciousness, by which we live, is itself but the 
creature of variety. Upon what food does it 
subsist in such a land ? What livelihood can 
repay a human creature for a life spent in this 
huge sameness ? He is cut off from books, 
from news, from company, from all that can 
relieve existence but the prosecution of his 
affairs. A sky full of stars is the most varied 
spectacle that he can hope. He may walk five 
miles and see nothing ; ten, and it is as though 
he had not moved ; twenty, and still he is in 
the midst of the same great level, and has 
approached no nearer to the one object within 
view, the flat horizon which keeps pace with his 
advance. We are full at home of the question 



Across the Plains 43 

of agreeable wall-papers, and wise people are of 
opinion that the temper may be quieted by- 
sedative surroundings. But what is to be said 
of the Nebraskan settler ? His is a wall-paper 
with a vengeance — one quarter of the universe 
laid bare in all its gauntness. His eye must 
embrace at every glance the whole seeming 
concave of the visible world ; it quails before so 
vast an outlook, it is tortured by distance ; yet 
there is no rest or shelter, till the man runs into 
his cabin, and can repose his sight upon things 
near at hand. Hence, I am told, a sickness of 
the vision peculiar to these empty plains. 

Yet perhaps with sunflowers and cicadas, 
summer and winter, cattle, wife and family, 
the settler may create a full and various exist- 
ence. One person at least I saw upon the 
plains who seemed in every way superior to 
her lot. This was a woman who boarded us 
at a way station, selling milk. She was largely 
formed; her features were more than comely; 
she had that great rarity — a fine complexion 
which became her; and her eyes were kind, 
dark, and steady. She sold milk with patri- 
archal grace. There was not a line in her 



44 Across the Plains 

countenance, not a note in her soft and sleepy 
voice, but spoke of an entire contentment with 
her life. It would have been fatuous arrogance 
to pity such a woman. Yet the place where 
she lived was to me almost ghastly. Less than 
a dozen wooden houses, all of a shape and all 
nearly of a size, stood planted along the railway 
lines. Each stood apart in its own lot. Each 
opened direct off the billiard-board, as if it were 
a billiard-board indeed, and these only models 
that had been set down upon it ready made. 
Her own, into which I looked, was clean but 
very empty, and showed nothing homelike but 
the burning fire. This extreme newness, above 
all in so naked and flat a country, gives a 
strong impression of artificiality. With none 
of the litter and discoloration of human life; 
with the paths unworn, and the houses still 
sweating from the axe, such a settlement as 
this seems purely scenic. The mind is loth 
to accept it for a piece of reality; and it 
seems incredible that life can go on with so 
few properties, or the great child, man, find 
entertainment in so bare a playroom. 

And truly it is as yet an incomplete society 



Across the Plains 45 

in some points; or at least it contained, as 
I passed through, one person incompletely 
civilised. At North Platte, where we supped 
that evening, one man asked another to pass 
the milk-jug. This other was well-dressed and 
of what we should call a respectable appear- 
ance; a darkish man, high spoken, eating as 
though he had some usage of society; but he 
turned upon the first speaker with extraordinary 
vehemence of tone — 

1 There's a waiter here ! ' he cried. 

' I only asked you to pass the milk,' explained 
the first. 

Here is the retort verbatim — 

* Pass ! Hell ! I'm not paid for that busi- 
ness ; the waiter's paid for it. You should use 
civility at table, and, by God, I'll show you 
how! ' 

The other man very wisely made no answer, 
and the bully went on with his supper as though 
nothing had occurred. It pleases me to think 
that some day soon he will meet with one of 
his own kidney; and that perhaps both may 
fall. 



46 Across the Plains 

THE DESERT OF WYOMING 

To cross such a plain is to grow homesick 
for the mountains. I longed for the Black 
Hills of Wyoming, which I knew we were 
soon to enter, like an ice-bound whaler for 
the spring. Alas ! and it was a worse country 
than the other. All Sunday and Monday we 
travelled through these sad mountains, or over 
the main ridge of the Rockies, which is a fair 
match to them for misery of aspect. Hour 
after hour it was the same unhomely and un- 
kindly world about our onward path; tumbled 
boulders, cliffs that drearily imitate the shape 
of monuments and fortifications — how drearily, 
how tamely, none can tell who has not seen 
them; not a tree, not a patch of sward, not 
one shapely or commanding mountain form ; 
sage-brush, eternal sage-brush ; over all, the 
same weariful and gloomy colouring, grays 
warming into brown, grays darkening towards 
black ; and for sole sign of life, here and there 
a few fleeing antelopes ; here and there, but 
at incredible intervals, a creek running in a 
canon. The plains have a grandeur of their 



Across the Plains 47 

own ; but here there is nothing but a contorted 
smallness. Except for the air, which was light 
and stimulating, there was not one good circum- 
stance in that God-forsaken land. 

I had been suffering in my health a good 
deal all the way; and at last, whether I was 
exhausted by my complaint or poisoned in 
some wayside eating-house, the evening we 
left Laramie, I fell sick outright. That was a 
night which I shall not readily forget. The 
lamps did not go out; each made a faint 
shining in its own neighbourhood, and the 
shadows were confounded together in the 
long, hollow box of the car. The sleepers 
lay in uneasy attitudes; here two chums 
alongside, flat upon their backs like dead 
folk; there a man sprawling on the floor, 
with his face upon his arm; there another 
half seated with his head and shoulders on 
the bench. The most passive were continually 
and roughly shaken by the movement of the 
train; others stirred, turned, or stretched out 
their arms like children ; it was surprising how 
many groaned and murmured in their sleep; 
and as I passed to and fro, stepping across the 



48 Across the Plains 

prostrate, and caught now a snore, now a gasp, 
now a half-formed word, it gave me a measure 
of the worthlessness of rest in that unresting 
vehicle. Although it was chill, I was obliged 
to open my window, for the degradation of the 
air soon became intolerable to one who was 
awake and using the full supply of life. Out- 
side, in a glimmering night, I saw the black, 
amorphous hills shoot by unweariedly into our 
wake. They that long for morning have never 
longed for it more earnestly than I. 

And yet when day came, it was to shine 
upon the same broken and unsightly quarter of 
the world. Mile upon mile, and not a tree, a 
bird, or a river. Only down the long, sterile 
canons, the train shot hooting and awoke the 
resting echo. That train was the one piece of 
life in all the deadly land; it was the one 
actor, the one spectacle fit to be observed in 
this paralysis of man and nature. And when 
I think how the railroad has been pushed 
through this unwatered wilderness and haunt 
of savage tribes, and now will bear an emigrant 
for some ,£12 from the Atlantic to the Golden 
Gates; how at each stage of the construction, 



Across the Plains 49 

roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust 
and death, sprang up and then died away 
again, and are now but wayside stations in 
the desert; how in these uncouth places pig- 
tailed Chinese pirates worked side by side 
with border ruffians and broken men from 
Europe, talking together in a mixed dialect, 
mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, quarrelling 
and murdering like wolves; how the plumed 
hereditary lord of all America heard, in this 
last fastness, the scream of the 'bad medicine 
waggon ' charioting his foes ; and then when I 
go on to remember that all this epical tur- 
moil was conducted by gentlemen in frock 
coats, and with a view to nothing more 
extraordinary than a fortune and a subsequent 
visit to Paris, it seems to me, I own, as if this 
railway were the one typical achievement of 
the age in which we live, as if it brought 
together into one plot all the ends of the 
world and all the degrees of social rank, and 
offered to some great writer the busiest, the 
most extended, and the most varied subject 
for an enduring literary work. If it be 
romance, if it be contrast, if it be heroism 



50 Across the Plains 

that we require, what was Troy town to this ? 
But, alas! it is not these things that are 
necessary — it is only Homer. 

Here also we are grateful to the train, as to 
some god who conducts us swiftly through these 
shades and by so many hidden perils. Thirst, 
hunger, the sleight and ferocity of Indians are 
all no more feared, so lightly do we skim these 
horrible lands; as the gull, who wings safely 
through the hurricane and past the shark. Yet 
we should not be forgetful of these hardships 
of the past ; and to keep the balance true, since 
I have complained of the trifling discomforts of 
my journey, perhaps more than was enough, 
let me add an original document. It was not 
written by Homer, but by a boy of eleven, long 
since dead, and is dated only twenty years ago. 
I shall punctuate, to make things clearer, but 
not change the spelling. 

1 My dear Sister Mary, — / am afraid you 
will go nearly crazy when you read my letter. 
If Jerry' (the writers eldest brotJiei?) 'has 
not written to you before now, you, will be sur- 
prised to heare that we are in California, and 
that poor Thomas ' {another brother, of fifteen) 



Across the Plains 51 

* is dead. We started from in July, 

with plenty of provisions and too yoke oxen. We 
went along very well till we got within six or 
seven hundred miles of California, when the 
Indians attacked us. We found places where 
they had killed the emigrants. We had one 
passenger with us, too guns, and one revolver ; 
so we ran all the lead We had into bullets (and) 
hung the guns up in the wagon so that we could 
get at them in a minit. It was about two o'clock 
in the afternoon ; droave the cattel a little way ; 
when a prairie chicken alited a little way from 
the wagon. 

1 Jerry took out one of the guns to shoot it, 
and told Tom drive the oxen. Tom and I 
drove the oxen, and Jerry and the passenger went 
on. Then, after a little, I left Tom and caught 
tip with Jerry and the other man. Jerry stopped 
for Tom to come up ; me and the man went on 
and sit down by a little stream. In a few 
minutes, we heard some noise ; then three shots 
{they all struck poor Tom, I suppose) ; then they 
gave the war hoop, and as many as twenty of the 
red skins came down upon us. The three that shot 
Tom was hid by the side of the road in the bushes. 



52 Across the Plains 

1 / thought the Tom and Jerry tvere shot ; so 
I told the other man that Tom and Jerry were 
dead, and that we had better try to escape, if 
possible. I had no shoes on ; having a sore foot, 
I thought I would not put them on. The man 
a?id me run down the road, but We was soon 
stopt by an Indian on a pony. We then turend 
the other way, and run up the side of the Moun- 
tain, and hid behind some cedar trees, and stayed 
there till dark. The Indians hunted all over 
after us, and verry close to us, so close that we 
could here there tomy hawks Jingle. At dark the 
man and me started on, I stubing my toes against 
sticks and stones. We traveld on all night ; 
and next morning, Just as it was getting gray, we 
saw something in the shape of a man. It layed 
Down in the grass. We went up to it, and it 
was Jerry. He thought we ware Indians. You 
can imagine how glad he was to see me. He 
thought we was all dead but him, and we thought 
him and Tom was dead. He had the gun that 
he took out of the wagon to shoot the prairie 
Chicken ; all he had was the load that was in it. 

* We traveld on till about eight o'clock, We 
caught up with one wagon with too men with it. 



Across the Plains 53 

We had traveld with them before one day ; we 
stopt and they Drove on; we knew that they was 
ahead of us, unless they had been killed to. My 
feet was so sore when we caught up with them 
that I had to ride ; I could not step. We 
traveld 011 for too days, when the men that owned 
the cattle said they would {could) not drive them 
another inch. We unyoked the oxen; we had 
about seventy pounds of flour ; we took it out and 
divided it into four packs. Each of the men took 
about 18 pounds apiece and a blanket. I carried 
a little bacon, dried meat, and little quilt; I had 
in all about tivelve pounds. We had one pint of 
flour a day for our alloyance. Sometimes we 
made soup of it ; sometimes we {made) pancakes ; 
and sometimes mixed it up with cold water and 
eat it that way. We traveld twelve or fourteen 
days. The time came at last when we should 
have to reach some place or starve. We saw 
fresh horse and cattle tracks. The morning 
come, we scraped all the flour out of the sack, 
mixed it tip, and baked it into bread, and made 
some soup, and eat everything we had. We 
traveld on all day without anything to eat, and 
that evening we Caught tip with a sheep train 



54 Across the Plains 

of eight wagons. We traveld with them till we 
arrived at the settleme7its ; a?zd know I am safe 
in California, and got to good home, a?id going 
to school. 

1 Jerry is working in . It is a 

good country. Yon can get from 50 to 60 
and 75 Dollars for cooking. Tell me all about 
the affairs in the States, and how all the folks get 
along? 

And so ends this artless narrative. The 
little man was at school again, God bless him, 
while his brother lay scalped upon the deserts. 

FELLOW PASSENGERS 

At Ogden we changed cars from the Union 
Pacific to the Central Pacific line of railroad. 
The change was doubly welcome ; for, first, we 
had better cars on the new line ; and, second, 
those in which we had been cooped for more 
than ninety hours had begun to stink abomi- 
nably. Several yards away, as we returned, let 
us say from dinner, our nostrils were assailed by 
rancid air. I have stood on a platform while 
the whole train was shunting; and as the 



Across the Plains 55 

dwelling-cars drew near, there would come a 
whiff of pure menagerie, only a little sourer, as 
from men instead of monkeys. I think we are 
human only in virtue of open windows. With- 
out fresh air, you only require a bad heart, and 
a remarkable command of the Queen's English, 
to become such another as Dean Swift ; a kind 
of leering, human goat, leaping and wagging 
your scut on mountains of offence. I do my 
best to keep my head the other way, and look 
for the human rather than the bestial in this 
Yahoo-like business of the emigrant train. But 
one thing I must say, the car of the Chinese 
was notably the least offensive. 

The cars on the Central Pacific were nearly 
twice as high, and so proportionally airier; 
they were freshly varnished, which gave us all 
a sense of cleanliness as though we had bathed ; 
the seats drew out and joined in the centre, so 
that there was no more need for bed boards; 
and there was an upper tier of berths which 
could be closed by day and opened at night. 

I had by this time some opportunity of 
seeing the people whom I was among. They 
were in rather marked contrast to the emi- 



56 Across the Plains 

grants I had met on board ship while crossing 
the Atlantic. They were mostly lumpish fel- 
lows, silent and noisy, a common combination ; 
somewhat sad, I should say, with an extraor- 
dinary poor taste in humour, and little inter- 
est in their fellow-creatures beyond that of 
a cheap and merely external curiosity. If 
they heard a man's name and business, they 
seemed to think they had the heart of that 
mystery ; but they were as eager to know that 
much as they were indifferent to the rest. 
Some of them were on nettles till they learned 
your name was Dickson and you a journeyman 
baker; but beyond that, whether you were 
Catholic or Mormon, dull or clever, fierce or 
friendly, was all one to them. Others who 
were not so stupid, gossiped a little, and, I am 
bound to say, unkindly. A favourite witticism 
was for some lout to raise the alarm of 'All 
aboard ! ' while the rest of us were dining, thus 
contributing his mite to the general discomfort. 
Such a one was always much applauded for 
his high spirits. When I was ill coming 
through Wyoming, I was astonished — fresh 
from the eager humanity on board ship — to 



Across the Plains 57 

meet with little but laughter. One of the 
young men even amused himself by incommod- 
ing me, as was then very easy ; and that not 
from ill-nature, but mere clodlike incapacity to 
think, for he expected me to join the laugh. 
I did so, but it was phantom merriment. 
Later on, a man from Kansas had three violent 
epileptic fits, and though, of course, there were 
not wanting some to help him, it was rather 
superstitious terror than sympathy that his case 
evoked among his fellow-passengers. 'Oh, 
I hope he's not going to die ! ' cried a woman ; 
1 it would be terrible to have a dead body ! ' 
And there was a very general movement to 
leave the man behind at the next station. 
This, by good fortune, the conductor negatived. 
There was a good deal of story-telling in 
some quarters ; in others, little but silence. In 
this society, more than any other that ever 
I was in, it was the narrator alone who seemed 
to enjoy the narrative. It was rarely that any 
one listened for the listening. If he lent an 
ear to another man's story, it was because he 
was in immediate want of a hearer for one of 
his own. Food and the progress of the train 



58 Across the Plains 

were the subjects most generally treated ; many 
joined to discuss these who otherwise would 
hold their tongues. One small knot had no 
better occupation than to worm out of me my 
name ; and the more they tried, the more obsti- 
nately fixed I grew to baffle them. They assailed 
me with artful questions and insidious offers of 
correspondence in the future; but I was per- 
petually on my guard, and parried their 
assaults with inward laughter. I am sure 
Dubuque would have given me ten dollars for 
the secret. He owed me far more, had he 
understood life, for thus preserving him a lively 
interest throughout the journey. I met one of 
my fellow-passengers months after, driving a 
street tramway car in San Francisco ; and, as 
the joke was now out of season, told him my 
name without subterfuge. You never saw a 
man more chapfallen. But had my name been 
Demogorgon, after so prolonged a mystery he 
had still been disappointed. 

There were no emigrants direct from 
Europe — save one German family and a knot 
of Cornish miners who kept grimly by them- 
selves, one reading the New Testament all day 



Across the Plains 59 

long through steel spectacles, the rest dis- 
cussing privately the secrets of their old-world, 
mysterious race. Lady Hester Stanhope be- 
lieved she could make something great of the 
Cornish ; for my part, I can make nothing of 
them at all. A division of races, older and 
more original than that of Babel, keeps this 
close, esoteric family apart from neighbouring 
Englishmen. Not even a Red Indian seems 
more foreign in my eyes. This is one of the 
lessons of travel — that some of the strangest 
races dwell next door to you at home. 

The rest were all American born, but they 
came from almost every quarter of that Con- 
tinent. All the States of the North had sent 
out a fugitive to cross the plains with me. 
From Virginia, from Pennsylvania, from New 
York, from far western Iowa and Kansas, from 
Maine that borders on the Canadas, and from 
the Canadas themselves — some one or two 
were fleeing in quest of a better land and better 
wages. The talk in the train, like the talk 
I heard on the steamer, ran upon hard times, 
short commons, and hope that moves ever 
westward. I thought of my shipful from Great 



60 Across the Plains 

Britain with a feeling of despair. They had 
come 3000 miles, and yet not far enough. 
Hard times bowed them out of the Clyde, and 
stood to welcome them at Sandy Hook. 
Where were they to go ? Pennsylvania, Maine, 
Iowa, Kansas? These were not places for 
immigration, but for emigration, it appeared; 
not one of them, but I knew a man who had 
lifted up his heel and left it for an ungrate- 
ful country. And it was still westward that 
they ran. Hunger, you would have thought, 
came out of the east like the sun, and the 
evening was made of edible gold. And, mean- 
time, in the car in front of me, were there not 
half a hundred emigrants from the opposite 
quarter? Hungry Europe and hungry China, 
each pouring from their gates in search of prov- 
ender, had here come face to face. The two 
waves had met ; east and west had alike failed ; 
the whole round world had been prospected 
and condemned; there was no El Dorado 
anywhere; and till one could emigrate to the 
moon, it seemed as well to stay patiently 
at home. Nor was there wanting another sign, 
at once more picturesque and more dishearten- 



Across the Plains 61 

ing; for, as we continued to steam westward 
toward the land of gold, we were continually 
passing other emigrant trains upon the journey 
east; and these were as crowded as our own. 
Had all these return voyagers made a fortune 
in the mines ? Were they all bound for Paris, 
and to be in Rome by Easter? It would 
seem not, for, whenever we met them, the 
passengers ran on the platform and cried to us 
through the windows, in a kind of wailing 
chorus, to * Come back.' On the plains of 
Nebraska, in the mountains of Wyoming, it 
was still the same cry, and dismal to my heart, 
' Come back ! ' That was what we heard by 
the way ' about the good country we were going 
to.' And at that very hour the Sand-lot of San 
Francisco was crowded with the unemployed, 
and the echo from the other side of Market 
Street was repeating the rant of demagogues. 

If, in truth, it were only for the sake of 
wages that men emigrate, how many thousands 
would regret the bargain ! But wages, indeed, 
are only one consideration out of many ; for we 
are a race of gipsies, and love change and 
travel for themselves. 



62 Across the Plains 

DESPISED RACES 

Of all stupid ill-feelings, the sentiment of my 
fellow-Caucasians towards our companions in 
the Chinese car was the most stupid and the 
worst. They seemed never to have looked at 
them, listened to them, or thought of them, but 
hated them a priori. The Mongols were their 
enemies in that cruel and treacherous battle-field 
of money. They could work better and cheaper 
in half a hundred industries, and hence there 
was no calumny too idle for the Caucasians to 
repeat, and even to believe. They declared 
them hideous vermin, and affected a kind of 
choking in the throat when they beheld them. 
Now, as a matter of fact, the young Chinese 
man is so like a large class of European women, 
that on raising my head and suddenly catching 
sight of one at a considerable distance, I have 
for an instant been deceived by the resemblance. 
I do not say it is the most attractive class of 
our women, but for all that many a man's wife 
is less pleasantly favoured. Again, my emi- 
grants declared that the Chinese were dirty. I 
cannot say they were clean, for that was impos- 



Across the Plains 63 

sible upon the journey ; but in their efforts after 
cleanliness they put the rest of us to shame. 
We all pigged and stewed in one infamy, wet 
our hands and faces for half a minute daily on 
the platform, and were unashamed. But the 
Chinese never lost an opportunity, and you 
would see them washing their feet — an act not 
dreamed of among ourselves — and going as far 
as decency permitted to wash their whole bodies. 
I may remark by the way that the dirtier people 
are in their persons the more delicate is their 
sense of modesty. A clean man strips in a 
crowded boathouse; but he who is unwashed 
slinks in and out of bed without uncovering an 
inch of skin. Lastly, these very foul and mal- 
odorous Caucasians entertained the surprising 
illusion that it was the Chinese waggon, and 
that alone, which stank. I have said already 
that it was the exception, and notably the 
freshest of the three. 

These judgments are typical of the feeling 
in all Western America. The Chinese are 
considered stupid, because they are imperfectly 
acquainted with English. They are held to be 
base, because their dexterity and frugality en- 



64 Across the Plains 

able them to underbid the lazy, luxurious 
Caucasian. They are said to be thieves ; I am 
sure they have no monopoly of that. They 
are called cruel ; the Anglo-Saxon and the 
cheerful Irishman may each reflect before he 
bears the accusation. I am told, again, that 
they are of the race of river pirates, and belong 
to the most despised and dangerous class in the 
Celestial Empire. But if this be so, what 
remarkable pirates have we here ! and what 
must be the virtues, the industry, the education, 
and the intelligence of their superiors at home ! 
Awhile ago it was the Irish, now it is the 
Chinese that must go. Such is the cry. It 
seems, after all, that no country is bound to 
submit to immigration any more than to 
invasion : each is war to the knife, and resist- 
ance to either but legitimate defence. Yet we 
may regret the free tradition of the republic, 
which loved to depict herself with open arms, 
welcoming all unfortunates. And certainly, as 
a man who believes that he loves freedom, I 
may be excused some bitterness when I find 
her sacred name misused in the contention. It 
was but the other day that I heard a vulgar 



Across the Plains 65 

fellow in the Sand-lot, the popular tribune of 
San Francisco, roaring for arms and butchery. 
'At the call of Abreham Lincoln,' said the 
orator, ' ye rose in the name of freedom to set 
free the negroes; can ye not rise and liberate 
yourselves from a few dhirty Mongolians ? ' 

For my own part, I could not look but with 
wonder and respect on the Chinese. Their 
forefathers watched the stars before mine had 
begun to keep pigs. Gunpowder and printing, 
which the other day we imitated, and a school 
of manners which we never had the delicacy so 
much as to desire to imitate, were theirs in a 
long-past antiquity. They walk the earth with 
us, but it seems they must be of different clay. 
They hear the clock strike the same hour, yet 
surely of a different epoch. They travel by 
steam conveyance, yet with such a baggage of 
old Asiatic thoughts and superstitions as might 
check the locomotive in its course. Whatever 
is thought within the circuit of the Great Wall ; 
what the wry-eyed, spectacled schoolmaster 
teaches in the hamlets round Pekin ; religions 
so old that our language looks a halfling boy 
alongside ; philosophy so wise that our best 



66 Across the Plains 

philosophers find things therein to wonder at; 
all this travelled alongside of me for thousands 
of miles over plain and mountain. Heaven 
knows if we had one common thought or fancy 
all that way, or whether our eyes, which yet 
were formed upon the same design, beheld the 
same world out of the railway windows. And 
when either of us turned his thoughts to home 
and childhood, what a strange dissimilarity must 
there not have been in these pictures of the 
mind — when I beheld that old, gray, castled 
city, high throned above the firth, with the flag 
of Britain flying, and the red-coat sentry pacing 
over all ; and the man in the next car to me 
would conjure up some junks and a pagoda and 
a fort of porcelain, and call it, with the same 
affection, home. 

Another race shared among my fellow- 
passengers in the disfavour of the Chinese ; and 
that, it is hardly necessary to say, was the noble 
red man of old story — he over whose own 
hereditary continent we had been steaming all 
these days. I saw no wild or independent 
Indian ; indeed, I hear that such avoid the 
neighbourhood of the train ; but now and again 



Across the Plains 67 

at way stations, a husband and wife and a few 
children, disgracefully dressed out with the 
sweepings of civilisation, came forth and stared 
upon the emigrants. The silent stoicism of 
their conduct, and the pathetic degradation of 
their appearance, would have touched any 
thinking creature, but my fellow-passengers 
danced and jested round them with a truly 
Cockney baseness. I was ashamed for the 
thing we call civilisation. We should carry 
upon our consciences so much, at least, of our 
forefathers' misconduct as we continue to profit 
by ourselves. 

If oppression drives a wise man mad, what 
should be raging in the hearts of these poor 
tribes, who have been driven back and back, step 
after step, their promised reservations torn from 
them one after another as the States extended 
westward, until at length they are shut up into 
these hideous mountain deserts of the centre — 
and even there find themselves invaded, insulted, 
and hunted out by ruffianly diggers? The 
eviction of the Cherokees (to name but an 
instance), the extortion of Indian agents, the 
outrages of the wicked, the ill-faith of all, nay, 



68 Across the Plains 

down to the ridicule of such poor beings as were 
here with me upon the train, make up a chap- 
ter of injustice and indignity such as a man 
must be in some ways base if his heart will 
suffer him to pardon or forget. These old, 
well-founded, historical hatreds have a savour 
of nobility for the independent. That the Jew 
should not love the Christian, nor the Irishman 
love the English, nor the Indian brave tolerate 
the thought of the American, is not disgraceful 
to the nature of man; rather, indeed, honour- 
able, since it depends on wrongs ancient like 
the race, and not personal to him who cherishes 
the indignation. 

TO THE GOLDEN GATES 

A little corner of Utah is soon traversed, 
and leaves no particular impressions on the 
mind. By an early hour on Wednesday morn- 
ing we stopped to breakfast at Toano, a little 
station on a bleak, high-lying plateau in Ne- 
vada. The man who kept the station eating- 
house was a Scot, and learning that I was 
the same, he grew very friendly, and gave me 



Across the Plains 69 

some advice on the country I was now entering. 
'You see,' said he, 'I tell you this, because I 
come from your country.' Hail, brither Scots! 
His most important hint was on the moneys 
of this part of the world. There is something 
in the simplicity of a decimal coinage which is 
revolting to the human mind ; thus the French, 
in small affairs, reckon strictly by halfpence; 
and you have to solve, by a spasm of mental 
arithmetic, such posers as thirty-two, forty-five, 
or even a hundred halfpence. In the Pacific 
States they have made a bolder push for com- 
plexity, and settle their affairs by a coin that 
no longer exists — the bit, or old Mexican real. 
The supposed value of the bit is twelve and a 
half cents, eight to the dollar. When it comes 
to two bits, the quarter-dollar stands for the 
required amount. But how about an odd bit ? 
The nearest coin to it is a dime, which is short 
by a fifth. That, then, is called a short bit. 
If you have one, you lay it triumphantly down, 
and save two and a half cents. But if you have 
not, and lay down a quarter, the bar-keeper or 
shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of 
change ; and thus you have paid what is called 



70 Across the Plains 

a long bit, and lost two and a half cents, or 
even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents. 
In country places all over the Pacific coast, 
nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or taken, 
which vastly increases the cost of life ; as even 
for a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or 
sevenpence-halfpenny, as the case may be. 
You would say that this system of mutual 
robbery was as broad as it was long; but I 
have discovered a plan to make it broader, with 
which I here endow the public. It is brief and 
simple — radiantly simple. There is one place 
where five cents are recognised, and that is the 
post-office. A quarter is only worth two bits, 
a short and a long. Whenever you have a 
quarter, go to the post-office and buy five cents' 
worth of postage-stamps; you will receive in 
change two dimes, that is, two short bits. The 
purchasing power of your money is undimin- 
ished. You can go and have your two glasses 
of beer all the same ; and you have made your- 
self a present of five cents' worth of postage- 
stamps into the bargain. Benjamin Franklin 
would have patted me on the head for this 
discovery. 



Across the Plains 71 

From Toano we travelled all day through 
deserts of alkali and sand, horrible to man, and 
bare sage-brush country that seemed little 
kindlier, and came by supper-time to Elko. 
As we were standing, after our manner, outside 
the station, I saw two men whip suddenly from 
underneath the cars, and take to their heels 
across country. They were tramps, it appeared, 
who had been riding on the beams since eleven 
of the night before ; and several of my fellow- 
passengers had already seen and conversed with 
them while we broke our fast at Toano. These 
land stowaways play a great part over here in 
America, and I should have liked dearly to 
become acquainted with them. 

At Elko an odd circumstance befell me. 
I was coming out from supper, when I was 
stopped by a small, stout, ruddy man, fol- 
lowed by two others taller and ruddier than 
himself. 

' Ex-cuse me, sir,' he said, ' but do you 
happen to be going on ? ' 

I said I was, whereupon he said he hoped 
to persuade me to desist from that intention. 
He had a situation to offer me, and if we could 



72 Across the Plains 

come to terms, why, good and well. ■ You see,' 
he continued, ' I'm running a theatre here, and 
we're a little short in the orchestra. You're a 
musician, I guess ? ' 

I assured him that, beyond a rudimentary 
acquaintance with ' Auld Lang Syne ' and 
'The Wearing of the Green,' I had no preten- 
sion whatever to that style. He seemed much 
put out of countenance; and one of his taller 
companions asked him, on the nail, for five 
dollars. 

'You see, sir,' added the latter to me, 'he 
bet you were a musician; I bet you weren't. 
No offence, I hope ? ' 

' None whatever,' I said, and the two with- 
drew to the bar, where I presume the debt was 
liquidated. 

This little adventure woke bright hopes in 
my fellow-travellers, who thought they had 
now come to a country where situations went 
a-begging. But I am not so sure that the 
offer was in good faith. Indeed, I am more 
than half persuaded it was but a feeler to decide 
the bet. 

Of all the next day I will tell you nothing, 



Across the Plains 73 

for the best of all reasons, that I remember no 
more than that we continued through desolate 
and desert scenes, fiery hot and deadly weary. 
But some time after I had fallen asleep that 
night, I was awakened by one of my com- 
panions. It was in vain that I resisted. A 
fire of enthusiasm and whisky burned in his 
eyes ; and he declared we were in a new 
country, and I must come forth upon the plat- 
form and see with my own eyes. The train 
was then, in its patient way, standing halted in 
a by-track. It was a clear, moonlit night; 
but the valley was too narrow to admit the 
moonshine direct, and only a diffused glimmer 
whitened the tall rocks and relieved the black- 
ness of the pines. A hoarse clamour filled the 
air ; it was the continuous plunge of a cascade 
somewhere near at hand among the mountains. 
The air struck chill, but tasted good and vigor- 
ous in the nostrils — a fine, dry, old mountain 
atmosphere. I was dead sleepy, but I returned 
to roost with a grateful mountain feeling at my 
heart. 

When I awoke next morning, I was puzzled 
for a while to know if it were day or night, 



74 Across the Plains 

for the illumination was unusual. I sat up at 
last, and found we were grading slowly down- 
ward through a long snowshed ; and suddenly 
we shot into an open; and before we were 
swallowed into the next length of wooden 
tunnel, I had one glimpse of a huge pine- 
forested ravine upon my left, a foaming river, 
and a sky already coloured with the fires of 
dawn. I am usually very calm over the 
displays of nature ; but you will scarce believe 
how my heart leaped at this. It was like 
meeting one's wife. I had come home again 
— home from unsightly deserts to the green 
and habitable corners of the earth. Every 
spire of pine along the hill-top, every trouty 
pool along that mountain river, was more 
dear to me than a blood relation. Few 
people have praised God more happily 
than I did. And thenceforward, down by 
Blue Canon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all the 
old mining camps, through a sea of mountain 
forests, dropping thousands of feet toward the 
far sea-level as we went, not I only, but all the 
passengers on board, threw off their sense of 
dirt and heat and weariness, and bawled like 



Across the Plains 75 

schoolboys, and thronged with shining eyes 
upon the platform and became new creatures 
within and without. The sun no longer 
oppressed us with heat, it only shone laugh- 
ingly along the mountain-side, until we were 
fain to laugh ourselves for glee. At every turn 
we could see farther into the land and our own 
happy futures. At every town the cocks were 
tossing their clear notes into the golden air, 
and crowing for the new day and the new 
country. For this was indeed our destination ; 
this was 'the good country' we had been 
going to so long. 

By afternoon we were at Sacramento, the 
city of gardens in a plain of corn; and the 
next day before the dawn we were lying 
to upon the Oakland side of San Francisco 
Bay. The day was breaking as we crossed 
the ferry; the fog was rising over the citied 
hills of San Francisco; the bay was perfect — 
not a ripple, scarce a stain, upon its blue 
expanse; everything was waiting, breathless, 
for the sun. A spot of cloudy gold lit first 
upon the head of Tamalpais, and then widened 
downward on its shapely shoulder; the air 



j 6 Across the Plains 

seemed to awaken, and began to sparkle ; and 
suddenly 

1 The tall hills Titan discovered/ 

and the city of San Francisco, and the bay of 

gold and corn, were lit from end to end with 

summer daylight. 

[1879.] 



II 

THE OLD PACIFIC CAPITAL: 

THE WOODS AND THE PACIFIC 

The Bay of Monterey has been compared by 
no less a person than General Sherman to 
a bent fishing-hook; and the comparison, if 
less important than the march through Georgia, 
still shows the eye of a soldier for topography. 
Santa Cruz sits exposed at the shank; the 
mouth of the Salinas river is at the middle 
of the bend ; and Monterey itself is cosily 
ensconced beside the barb. Thus the ancient 
capital of California faces across the bay, while 
the Pacific Ocean, though hidden by low hills 
and forest, bombards her left flank and rear 
with never-dying surf. In front of the town, 
the long line of sea-beach trends north and 
north-west, and then westward to enclose the 

77 



78 The Old Pacific Capital 

bay. The waves which lap so quietly about 
the jetties of Monterey grow louder and larger 
in the distance; you can see the breakers 
leaping high and white by day; at night, the 
outline of the shore is traced in transparent 
silver by the moonlight and the flying foam; 
and from all round, even in quiet weather, the 
low, distant, thrilling roar of the Pacific hangs 
over the coast and the adjacent country like 
smoke above a battle. 

These long beaches are enticing to the idle 
man. It would be hard to find a walk more 
solitary and at the same time more exciting to 
the mind. Crowds of ducks and sea-gulls 
hover over the sea. Sandpipers trot in and out 
by troops after the retiring waves, trilling 
together in a chorus of infinitesimal song. 
Strange sea-tangles, new to the European eye, 
the bones of whales, or sometimes a whole 
whale's carcase, white with carrion-gulls and 
poisoning the wind, lie scattered here and 
there along the sands. The waves come in 
slowly, vast and green, curve their translucent 
necks, and burst with a surprising uproar, that 
runs, waxing and waning, up and down the 



The Old Pacific Capital 79 

long key-board of the beach. The foam of 
these great ruins mounts in an instant to the 
ridge of the sand glacis, swiftly fleets back 
again, and is met and buried by the next 
breaker. The interest is perpetually fresh. 
On no other coast that I know shall you enjoy, 
in calm, sunny weather, such a spectacle of 
Ocean's greatness, such beauty of changing 
colour, or such degrees of thunder in the sound. 
The very air is more than usually salt by this 
Homeric deep. 

Inshore, a tract of sand-hills borders on the 
beach. Here and there a lagoon, more or less 
brackish, attracts the birds and hunters. A 
rough, spotty undergrowth partially conceals 
the sand. The crouching, hardy, live-oaks 
flourish singly or in thickets — the kind of wood 
for murderers to crawl among — and here and 
there the skirts of the forest extend downward 
from the hills with a floor of turf and long 
aisles of pine-trees hung with Spaniard's 
Beard. Through this quaint desert the railway 
cars drew near to Monterey from the junction 
at Salinas City— though that and so many 
other things are now for ever altered — and it 



80 The Old Pacific Capital 

was from here that you had the first view of the 
old township lying in the sands, its white 
windmills bickering in the chill, perpetual wind, 
and the first fogs of the evening drawing 
drearily around it from the sea. 

The one common note of all this country is 
the haunting presence of the ocean. A great 
faint sound of breakers follows you high up 
into the inland canons; the roar of water 
dwells in the clean, empty rooms of Monterey 
as in a shell upon the chimney ; go where you 
will you have but to pause and listen to hear 
the voice of the Pacific. You pass out of the 
town to the south-west, and mount the hill 
among pine woods. Glade, thicket, and grove 
surround you. You follow winding sandy 
tracks that lead nowhither. You see a deer ; 
a multitude of quail arises. But the sound 
of the sea still follows you as you advance, 
like that of wind among the trees, only harsher 
and stranger to the ear; and when at length 
you gain the summit, out breaks on every hand 
and with freshened vigour, that same unending, 
distant, whispering rumble of the ocean ; for 
now you are on the top of Monterey peninsula, 



The Old Pacific Capital 81 

and the noise no longer only mounts to you 
from behind along the beach towards Santa 
Cruz, but from your right also, round by 
Chinatown and Pinos lighthouse, and from 
down before you to the mouth of the Car- 
mello river. The whole woodland is begirt 
with thundering surges. The silence that 
immediately surrounds you where you stand 
is not so much broken as it is haunted by 
this distant, circling rumour. It sets your 
senses upon edge; you strain your attention; 
you are clearly and unusually conscious of 
small sounds near at hand; you walk listen- 
ing like an Indian hunter; and that voice 
of the Pacific is a sort of disquieting company 
to you in your walk. 

When once I was in these woods I found it 
difficult to turn homeward. All woods lure a 
rambler onward; but in those of Monterey it 
was the surf that particularly invited me to 
prolong my walks. I would push straight for 
the shore where I thought it to be nearest. 
Indeed, there was scarce a direction that would 
not, sooner or later, have brought me forth on 
the Pacific. The emptiness of the woods gave 



82 The Old Pacific Capital 

me a sense of freedom and discovery in these 
excursions. I never in all my visits met but 
one man. He was a Mexican, very dark of 
hue, but smiling and fat, and he carried an axe, 
though his true business at that moment was 
to seek for straying cattle. I asked him what 
o'clock it was, but he seemed neither to know 
nor care; and when he in his turn asked me 
for news of his cattle, I showed myself equally 
indifferent. We stood and smiled upon each 
other for a few seconds, and then turned with- 
out a word and took our several ways across 
the forest. 

One day — I shall never forget it — I had 
taken a trail that was new to me. After a 
while the woods began to open, the sea to 
sound nearer hand. I came upon a road, and, 
to my surprise, a stile. A step or two farther, 
and, without leaving the woods, I found myself 
among trim houses. I walked through street 
after street, parallel and at right angles, paved 
with sward and dotted with trees, but still un- 
deniable streets, and each with its name posted 
at the corner, as in a real town. Facing down 
the main thoroughfare — 'Central Avenue,' as 



The Old Pacific Capital 8$ 

it was ticketed — I saw an open-air temple, 
with benches and sounding-board, as though 
for an orchestra. The houses were all tightly 
shuttered ; there was no smoke, no sound but 
of the waves, no moving thing. I have never 
been in any place that seemed so dreamlike. 
Pompeii is all in a bustle with visitors, and its 
antiquity and strangeness deceive the imagina- 
tion ; but this town had plainly not been built 
above a year or two, and perhaps had been 
deserted overnight. Indeed, it was not so 
much like a deserted town as like a scene upon 
the stage by daylight, and with no one on the 
boards. The barking of a dog led me at last 
to the only house still occupied, where a Scotch 
pastor and his wife pass the winter alone in this 
empty theatre. The place was * The Pacific 
Camp Grounds, the Christian Seaside Resort.' 
Thither, in the warm season, crowds come to 
enjoy a life of teetotalism, religion, and flirta- 
tion, which I am willing to think blameless and 
agreeable. The neighbourhood at least is well 
selected. The Pacific booms in front. West- 
ward is Point Pinos, with the lighthouse in a 
wilderness of sand, where you will find the 



84 The Old Pacific Capital 

lightkeeper playing the piano, making models 
and bows and arrows, studying dawn and 
sunrise in amateur oil-painting, and with a 
dozen other elegant pursuits and interests to 
surprise his brave, old-country rivals. To the 
east, and still nearer, you will come upon a 
space of open down, a hamlet, a haven among 
rocks, a world of surge and screaming sea- 
gulls. Such scenes are very similar in different 
climates; they appear homely to the eyes of 
all; to me this was like a dozen spots in 
Scotland. And yet the boats that ride in the 
haven are of strange outlandish design; and, 
if you walk into the hamlet, you will behold 
costumes and faces and hear a tongue that 
are unfamiliar to the memory. The joss-stick 
burns, the opium pipe is smoked, the floors are 
strewn with slips of coloured paper — prayers, 
you would say, that had somehow missed their 
destination — and a man guiding his upright 
pencil from right to left across the sheet, writes 
home the news of Monterey to the Celestial 
Empire. 

The woods and the Pacific rule between 
them the climate of this seaboard region. On 



The Old Pacific Capital 85 

the streets of Monterey, when the air does not 
smell salt from the one, it will be blowing per- 
fumed from the resinous tree-tops of the other. 
For days together a hot, dry air will overhang 
the town, close as from an oven, yet healthful 
and aromatic in the nostrils. The cause is 
not far to seek, for the woods are afire, and 
the hot wind is blowing from the hills. These 
fires are one of the great dangers of California. 
I have seen from Monterey as many as three 
at the same time, by day a cloud of smoke, by 
night a red coal of conflagration in the distance. 
A little thing will start them, and, if the wind 
be favourable, they gallop over miles of country 
faster than a horse. The inhabitants must turn 
out and work like demons, for it is not only the 
pleasant groves that are destroyed ; the climate 
and the soil are equally at stake, and these 
fires prevent the rains of the next winter and 
dry up perennial fountains. California has been 
a land of promise in its time, like Palestine; 
but if the woods continue so swiftly to perish, 
it may become, like Palestine, a land of deso- 
lation. 

To visit the woods while they are languidly 



86 The Old Pacific Capital 

burning is a strange piece of experience. The 
fire passes through the underbrush at a run. 
Every here and there a tree flares up instan- 
taneously from root to summit, scattering tufts 
of flame, and is quenched, it seems, as quickly. 
But this last is only in semblance. For after 
this first squib-like conflagration of the dry moss 
and twigs, there remains behind a deep-rooted 
and consuming fire in the very entrails of the 
tree. The resin of the pitch-pine is principally 
condensed at the base of the bole and in the 
spreading roots. Thus, after the light, showy, 
skirmishing flames, which are only as the match 
to the explosion, have already scampered down 
the wind into the distance, the true harm is but 
beginning for this giant of the woods. You 
may approach the tree from one side, and see 
it, scorched indeed from top to bottom, but 
apparently survivor of the peril. Make the 
circuit, and there, on the other side of the 
column, is a clear mass of living coal, spreading 
like an ulcer ; while underground, to their most 
extended fibre, the roots are being eaten out by 
fire, and the smoke is rising through the fissures 
to the surface. A little while, and, without a 



The Old Pacific Capital 87 

nod of warning, the huge pine-tree snaps off 
short across the ground and falls prostrate with 
a crash. Meanwhile the fire continues its silent 
business; the roots are reduced to a fine ash; 
and long afterwards, if you pass by, you will 
find the earth pierced with radiating galleries, 
and preserving the design of all these subter- 
ranean spurs, as though it were the mould for 
a new tree instead of the print of an old one. 
These pitch-pines of Monterey are, with the 
single exception of the Monterey cypress, the 
most fantastic of forest trees. No words can 
give an idea of the contortion of their growth ; 
they might figure without change in a circle of 
the nether hell as Dante pictured it; and at 
the rate at which trees grow, and at which 
forest fires spring up and gallop through the 
hills of California, we may look forward to a 
time when there will not be one of them left 
standing in that land of their nativity. At 
least they have not so much to fear from the 
axe, but perish by what may be called a natural 
although a violent death; while it is man in 
his short-sighted greed that robs the country 
of the nobler red-wood. Yet a little while and 



88 The Old Pacific Capital 

perhaps all the hills of sea-board California 
may be as bald as Tamalpais. 

I have an interest of my own in these forest 
fires, for I came so near to lynching on one 
occasion, that a braver man might have retained 
a thrill from the experience. I wished to be 
certain whether it was the moss, that quaint 
funereal ornament of Californian forests, which 
blazed up so rapidly when the flame first 
touched the tree. I suppose I must have been 
under the influence of Satan, for instead of 
plucking off a piece for my experiment, what 
should I do but walk up to a great pine-tree in 
a portion of the wood which had escaped so 
much as scorching, strike a match, and apply 
the flame gingerly to one of the tassels. The 
tree went off simply like a rocket; in three 
seconds it was a roaring pillar of fire. Close 
by I could hear the shouts of those who were 
at work combating the original conflagration. 
I could see the waggon that had brought them 
tied to a live oak in a piece of open ; I could 
even catch the flash of an axe as it swung up 
through the underwood into the sunlight. Had 
any one observed the result of my experiment 



The Old Pacific Capital 89 

my neck was literally not worth a pinch of 
snuff ; after a few minutes of passionate expos- 
tulation I should have been run up to a 
convenient bough. 

To die for faction is a common evil ; 

But to be hanged for nonsense is the devil. 

I have run repeatedly, but never as I ran that 
day. At night I went out of town, and there 
was my own particular fire, quite distinct from 
the other, and burning as I thought with even 
greater vigour. 

But it is the Pacific that exercises the most 
direct and obvious power upon the climate. 
At sunset, for months together, vast, wet, 
melancholy fogs arise and come shoreward from 
the ocean. From the hill-top above Monterey 
the scene is often noble, although it is always 
sad. The upper air is still bright with sun- 
light ; a glow still rests upon the Gabelano 
Peak; but the fogs are in possession of the 
lower levels ; they crawl in scarves among the 
sandhills; they float, a little higher, in clouds 
of a gigantic size and often of a wild configura- 
tion ; to the south, where they have struck the 



90 The Old Pacific Capital 

seaward shoulder of the mountains of Santa 
Lucia, they double back and spire up skyward 
like smoke. Where their shadow touches, 
colour dies out of the world. The air grows 
chill and deadly as they advance. The trade- 
wind freshens, the trees begin to sigh, and all 
the windmills in Monterey are whirling and 
creaking and filling their cisterns with the 
brackish water of the sands. It takes but a 
little while till the invasion is complete. The 
sea, in its lighter order, has submerged the 
earth. Monterey is curtained in for the night 
in thick, wet, salt, and frigid clouds, so to 
remain till day returns ; and before the sun's 
rays they slowly disperse and retreat in broken 
squadrons to the bosom of the sea. And yet 
often when the fog is thickest and most chill, 
a few steps out of the town and up the slope, 
the night will be dry and warm and full of 
inland perfume. 

MEXICANS, AMERICANS, AND INDIANS 

The history of Monterey has yet to be 
written. Founded by Catholic missionaries, 



The Old Pacific Capital 91 

a place of wise beneficence to Indians, a place 
of arms, a Mexican capital continually wrested 
by one faction from another, an American 
capital when the first House of Representatives 
held its deliberations, and then falling lower and 
lower from the capital of the State to the 
capital of a county, and from that again, by 
the loss of its charter and town lands, to a 
mere bankrupt village, its rise and decline is 
typical of that of all Mexican institutions and 
even Mexican families in California. 

Nothing is stranger in that strange State 
than the rapidity with which the soil has 
changed hands. The Mexicans, you may say, 
are all poor and landless, like their former 
capital; and yet both it and they hold them- 
selves apart and preserve their ancient customs 
and something of their ancient air. 

The town, when I was there, was a place of 
two or three streets, economically paved with 
sea-sand, and two or three lanes, which were 
watercourses in the rainy season, and were, at 
all times, rent up by fissures four or five feet 
deep. There were no street lights. Short 
sections of wooden sidewalk only added to the 



92 The Old Pacific Capital 

dangers of the night, for they were often high 
above the level of the roadway, and no one 
could tell where they would be likely to begin 
or end. The houses were, for the most part, 
built of unbaked adobe brick, many of them 
old for so new a country, some of very elegant 
proportions, with low, spacious, shapely rooms, 
and walls so thick that the heat of summer 
never dried them to the heart. At the approach 
of the rainy season a deathly chill and a grave- 
yard smell began to hang about the lower floors ; 
and diseases of the chest are common and fatal 
among house-keeping people of either sex. 

There was no activity but in and around the 
saloons, where people sat almost all day long 
playing cards. The smallest excursion was 
made on horseback. You would scarcely ever 
see the main street without a horse or two tied 
to posts, and making a fine figure with their 
Mexican housings. It struck me oddly to 
come across some of the Cornhill illustrations 
to Mr. Blackmore's Ercma, and see all the 
characters astride on English saddles. As 
a matter of fact, an English saddle is a rarity 
even in San Francisco, and, you may say, a 



The Old Pacific Capital 93 

thing unknown in all the rest of California. In 
a place so exclusively Mexican as Monterey, you 
saw not only Mexican saddles but true Vaquero 
riding — men always at the hand-gallop up hill 
and down dale, and round the sharpest corner, 
urging their horses with cries and gesticulations 
and cruel rotatory spurs, checking them dead 
with a touch, or wheeling them right-about-face 
in a square yard. The type of face and char- 
acter of bearing are surprisingly un-American. 
The first ranged from something like the pure 
Spanish, to something, in its sad fixity, not 
unlike the pure Indian, although I do not 
suppose there was one pure blood of either race 
in all the country. As for the second, it was 
a matter of perpetual surprise to find, in that 
world of absolutely mannerless Americans, a 
people full of deportment, solemnly courteous, 
and doing all things with grace and decorum. 
In dress they ran to colour and bright sashes. 
Not even the most Americanised could always 
resist the temptation to stick a red rose into 
his hatband. Not even the most Americanised 
would descend to wear the vile dress hat of 
civilisation. Spanish was the language of the 



94 The Old Pacific Capital 

streets. It was difficult to get along without a 
word or two of that language for an occasion. 
The only communications in which the popula- 
tion joined were with a view to amusement. 
A weekly public ball took place with great 
etiquette, in addition to the numerous fan- 
dangoes in private houses. There was a really 
fair amateur brass band. Night after night 
serenaders would be going about the street, 
sometimes in a company and with several 
instruments and voices together, sometimes 
severally, each guitar before a different window. 
It was a strange thing to lie awake in nineteenth- 
century America, and hear the guitar accom- 
pany, and one of these old, heart-breaking 
Spanish love songs mount into the night air, 
perhaps in a deep baritone, perhaps in that 
high-pitched, pathetic, womanish alto which is 
so common among Mexican men, and which 
strikes on the unaccustomed ear as something 
not entirely human but altogether sad. 

The town, then, was essentially and wholly 
Mexican; and yet almost all the land in the 
neighbourhood was held by Americans, and it 
was from the same class, numerically so small, 



The Old Pacific Capital 95 

that the principal officials were selected. This 
Mexican and that Mexican would describe to 
you his old family estates, not one rood of 
which remained to him. You would ask him 
how that came about, and elicit some tangled 
story back-foremost, from which you gathered 
that the Americans had been greedy like 
designing men, and the Mexicans greedy like 
children, but no other certain fact. Their 
merits and their faults contributed alike to the 
ruin of the former landholders. It is true they 
were improvident, and easily dazzled with the 
sight of ready money; but they were gentle- 
folk besides, and that in a way which curiously 
unfitted them to combat Yankee craft. Suppose 
they have a paper to sign, they would think it 
a reflection on the other party to examine the 
terms with any great minuteness ; nay, suppose 
them to observe some doubtful clause, it is ten 
to one they would refuse from delicacy to object 
to it. I know I am speaking within the mark, 
for I have seen such a case occur, and the 
Mexican, in spite of the advice of his lawyer, 
has signed the imperfect paper like a lamb. 
To have spoken in the matter, he said, above 



96 The Old Pacific Capital 

all to have let the other party guess that he 
had seen a lawyer, would have ' been like 
doubting his word.' The scruple sounds oddly 
to one of ourselves, who have been brought up 
to understand all business as a competition in 
fraud, and honesty itself to be a virtue which 
regards the carrying out but not the creation 
of agreements. This single unworldly trait will 
account for much of that revolution of which 
we are speaking. The Mexicans have the 
name of being great swindlers, but certainly 
the accusation cuts both ways. In a contest 
of this sort, the entire booty would scarcely 
have passed into the hands of the more scrupu- 
lous race. 

Physically the Americans have triumphed; 
but it is not entirely seen how far they have 
themselves been morally conquered. This is, of 
course, but a part of a part of an extraordinary 
problem now in the course of being solved 
in the various States of the American Union. 
I am reminded of an anecdote. Some years 
ago, at a great sale of wine, all the odd lots 
were purchased by a grocer in a small way in 
the old town of Edinburgh. The agent had 



The Old Pacific Capital 97 

the curiosity to visit him some time after and 
inquire what possible use he could have for 
such material. He was shown, by way of 
answer, a huge vat where all the liquors, from 
humble Gladstone to imperial Tokay, were 
fermenting together. 'And what,' he asked, 
'do you propose to call this?' 'I'm no very 
sure,' replied the grocer, ' but I think it's going 
to turn out port' In the older Eastern States, 
I think we may say that this hotch-potch of 
races is going to turn out English, or there- 
about. But the problem is indefinitely varied 
in other zones. The elements are differently 
mingled in the south, in what we may call the 
Territorial belt, and in the group of States on 
the Pacific coast. Above all, in these last, we 
may look to see some monstrous hybrid — 
whether good or evil, who shall forecast? but 
certainly original and all their own. In my 
little restaurant at Monterey, we have sat down 
to table day after day, a Frenchman, two 
Portuguese, an Italian, a Mexican, and a 
Scotchman : we had for common visitors an 
American from Illinois, a nearly pure blood 
Indian woman, and a naturalised Chinese ; and 



98 The Old Pacific Capital 

from time to time a Switzer and a German 
came down from country ranches for the night. 
No wonder that the Pacific coast is a foreign 
land to visitors from the Eastern States, for 
each race contributes something of its own. 
Even the despised Chinese have taught the 
youth of California, none indeed of their 
virtues, but the debasing use of opium. And 
chief among these influences is that of the 
Mexicans. 

The Mexicans although in the State are 
out of it. They still preserve a sort of inter- 
national independence, and keep their affairs 
snug to themselves. Only four or five years 
ago Vasquez, the bandit, his troops being 
dispersed and the hunt too hot for him in 
other parts of California, returned to his native 
Monterey, and was seen publicly in her streets 
and saloons, fearing no man. The year that I 
was there there occurred two reputed murders. 
As the Montereyans are exceptionally vile 
speakers of each other and of every one behind 
his back, it is not possible for me to judge 
how much truth there may have been in these 
reports ; but in the one case every one believed, 



The Old Pacific Capital 99 

and in the other some suspected, that there 
had been foul play ; and nobody dreamed for 
an instant of taking the authorities into their 
counsel. Now this is, of course, characteristic 
enough of the Mexicans ; but it is a note- 
worthy feature that all the Americans in 
Monterey acquiesced without a word in this 
inaction. Even when I spoke to them upon 
the subject, they seemed not to understand 
my surprise; they had forgotten the tradi- 
tions of their own race and upbringing, and 
become, in a word, wholly Mexicanised. 

Again, the Mexicans, having no ready money 
to speak of, rely almost entirely in their busi- 
ness transactions upon each other's worthless 
paper. Pedro the penniless pays you with an 
I O U from the equally penniless Miguel. It 
is a sort of local currency by courtesy. Credit 
in these parts has passed into a superstition. 
I have seen a strong, violent man struggling 
for months to recover a debt, and getting 
nothing but an exchange of waste paper. The 
very storekeepers are averse to asking for cash 
payments, and are more surprised than pleased 
when they are offered. They fear there must 



ioo The Old Pacific Capital 

be something under it, and that you mean to 
withdraw your custom from them. I have 
seen the enterprising chemist and stationer 
begging me with fervour to let my account 
run on, although I had my purse open in my 
hand ; and partly from the commonness of 
the case, partly from some remains of that 
generous old Mexican tradition which made 
all men welcome to their tables, a person may 
be notoriously both unwilling and unable to 
pay, and still find credit for the necessaries of 
life in the stores of Monterey. Now this 
villainous habit of living upon ' tick ' has 
grown into Californian nature. I do not mean 
that the American and European storekeepers 
of Monterey are as lax as Mexicans; I mean 
that American farmers in many parts of the 
State expect unlimited credit, and profit by it 
in the meanwhile, without a thought for con- 
sequences. Jew storekeepers have already 
learned the advantage to be gained from this ; 
they lead on the farmer into irretrievable in- 
debtedness, and keep him ever after as their 
bond-slave hopelessly grinding in the mill. 
So the whirligig of time brings in its revenges, 



The Old Pacific Capital 101 

and except that the Jew knows better than to 
foreclose, you may see Americans bound in 
the same chains with which they themselves 
had formerly bound the Mexican. It seems 
as if certain sorts of follies, like certain sorts 
of grain, were natural to the soil rather than 
to the race that holds and tills it for the 
moment. 

In the meantime, however, the Americans 
rule in Monterey County. The new county 
seat, Salinas City, in the bald, corn-bearing 
plain under the Gabelano Peak, is a town of a 
purely American character. The land is held, 
for the most part, in those enormous tracts 
which are another legacy of Mexican days, 
and form the present chief danger and dis- 
grace of California ; and the holders are 
mostly of American or British birth. We 
have here in England no idea of the troubles 
and inconveniences which flow from the exist- 
ence of these large landholders — land-thieves, 
land-sharks, or land-grabbers, they are more 
commonly and plainly called. Thus the 
townlands of Monterey are all in the hands 
of a single man. How they came there is 



102 The Old Pacific Capital 

an obscure, vexatious question, and, rightly 
or wrongly, the man is hated with a great 
hatred. His life has been repeatedly in 
danger. Not very long ago, I was told, 
the stage was stopped and examined three 
evenings in succession by disguised horsemen 
thirsting for his blood. A certain house on 
the Salinas road, they say, he always passes 
in his buggy at full speed, for the squatter 
sent him warning long ago. But a year 
since he was publicly pointed out for death 
by no less a man than Mr. Dennis Kearney. 
Kearney is a man too well known in Cali- 
fornia, but a word of explanation is required 
for English readers. Originally an Irish 
drayman, he rose, by his command of bad 
language, to almost dictatorial authority in 
the State; throned it there for six months 
or so, his mouth full of oaths, gallowses, and 
conflagrations ; was first snuffed out last winter 
by Mr. Coleman, backed by his San Francisco 
Vigilantes and three gatling guns ; completed 
his own ruin by throwing in his lot with the 
grotesque Greenbacker party; and had at last 
to be rescued by his old enemies, the police, 



The Old Pacific Capital 103 

out of the hands of his rebellious followers. 
It was while he was at the top of his fortune 
that Kearney visited Monterey with his battle- 
cry against Chinese labour, the railroad mo- 
nopolists, and the land-thieves ; and his one 
articulate counsel to the Montereyans was to 
• hang David Jacks.' Had the town been 
American, in my private opinion, this would 
have been done years ago. Land is a subject 
on which there is no jesting in the West, and 
I 'have seen my friend the lawyer drive out of 
Monterey to adjust a competition of titles with 
the face of a captain going into battle and his 
Smith-and- Wesson convenient to his hand. 

On the ranche of another of these land- 
holders you may find our old friend, the truck 
system, in full operation. Men live there, year 
in year out, to cut timber for a nominal wage, 
which is all consumed in supplies. The longer 
they remain in this desirable service the deeper 
they will fall in debt — a burlesque injustice in 
a new country, where labour should be precious, 
and one of those typical instances which 
explains the prevailing discontent and the 
success of the demagogue Kearney. 



104 The Old Pacific Capital 

In a comparison between what was and 
what is in California, the praisers of times past 
will fix upon the Indians of Carmel. The 
valley drained by the river so named is a true 
Californian valley, bare, dotted with chaparral, 
overlooked by quaint, unfinished hills. The 
Carmel runs by many pleasant farms, a clear 
and shallow river, loved by wading kine ; and 
at last, as it is falling towards a quicksand and 
the great Pacific, passes a ruined mission on 
a hill. From the mission church the ey*e 
embraces a great field of ocean, and the ear 
is filled with a continuous sound of distant 
breakers on the shore. But the day of the 
Jesuit has gone by, the day of the Yankee has 
succeeded, and there is no one left to care for 
the converted savage. The church is roofless 
and ruinous, sea-breezes and sea-fogs, and the 
alternation of the rain and sunshine, daily 
widening the breaches and casting the crockets 
from the wall. As an antiquity in this new 
land, a quaint specimen of missionary archi- 
tecture, and a memorial of good deeds, it had 
a triple claim to preservation from all thinking 
people; but neglect and abuse have been its 



The Old Pacific Capital 105 

portion. There is no sign of American inter- 
ference, save where a headboard has been torn 
from a grave to be a mark for pistol bullets. 
So it is with the Indians for whom it was 
erected. Their lands, I was told, are being 
yearly encroached upon by the neighbouring 
American proprietor, and with that exception 
no man troubles his head for the Indians of 
Carmel. Only one day in the year, the day be- 
fore our Guy Fawkes, the padre drives over the 
hill from Monterey ; the little sacristy, which is 
the only covered portion of the church, is filled 
with seats and decorated for the service ; the 
Indians troop together, their bright dresses 
contrasting with their dark and melancholy 
faces ; and there, among a crowd of somewhat 
unsympathetic holiday-makers, you may hear 
God served with perhaps more touching 
circumstances than in any other temple under 
heaven. An Indian, stone-blind and about 
eighty years of age, conducts the singing ; 
other Indians compose the choir ; yet they 
have the Gregorian music at their finger ends, 
and pronounce the Latin so correctly that 
I could follow the meaning as they sang. The 



106 The Old Pacific Capital 

pronunciation was odd and nasal, the singing 
hurried and staccato. ' In saecula sseculo-ho- 
horum,' they went, with a vigorous aspirate to 
every additional syllable. I have never seen 
faces more vividly lit up with joy than the 
faces of these Indian singers. It was to them 
not only the worship of God, nor an act by 
which they recalled and commemorated better 
days, but was besides an exercise of culture, 
where all they knew of art and letters was 
united and expressed. And it made a man's 
heart sorry for the good fathers of yore who 
had taught them to dig and to reap, to read 
and to sing, who had given them European 
mass-books which they still preserve and study 
in their cottages, and who had now passed 
away from all authority and influence in that 
land — to be succeeded by greedy land-thieves 
and sacrilegious pistol-shots. So ugly a thing 
may our Anglo-Saxon Protestantism appear 
beside the doings of the Society of Jesus. 

But revolution in this world succeeds to 
revolution. All that I say in this paper is in 
a paulo-past tense. The Monterey of last 
year exists no longer. A huge hotel has 



The Old Pacific Capital 107 

sprung up in the desert by the railway. Three 
sets of diners sit down successively to table. 
Invaluable toilettes figure along the beach and 
between the live oaks ; and Monterey is adver- 
tised in the newspapers, and posted in the 
waiting-rooms at railway stations, as a resort 
for wealth and fashion. Alas for the little 
town ! it is not strong enough to resist the 
influence of the flaunting caravanserai, and the 
poor, quaint, penniless native gentlemen of 
Monterey must perish, like a lower race, before 
the millionaire vulgarians of the Big Bonanza. 

[1880.] 



Ill 

FONTAINEBLEAU : 

VILLAGE COMMUNITIES OF PAINTERS 



The charm of Fontainebleau is a thing apart. 
It is a place that people love even more 
than they admire. The vigorous forest air, 
the silence, the majestic avenues of high- 
way, the wilderness of tumbled boulders, the 
great age and dignity of certain groves — 
these are but ingredients, they are not the 
secret of the philtre. The place is sanative; 
the air, the light, the perfumes, and the 
shapes of things concord in happy harmony. 
The artist may be idle and not fear the 
'blues.' He may dally with his life. Mirth, 
lyric mirth, and a vivacious classical content- 
ment are of the very essence of the better 

kind of art; and these, in that most smiling 
108 



Fojitainebleaic 109 

forest, he has the chance to learn or to remem- 
ber. Even on the plain of Biere, where the 
Angelus of Millet still tolls upon the ear of 
fancy, a larger air, a higher heaven, something 
ancient and healthy in the face of nature, 
purify the mind alike from dulness and hys- 
teria. There is no place where the young are 
more gladly conscious of their youth, or the 
old better contented with their age. 

The fact of its great and special beauty 
further recommends this country to the artist. 
The field was chosen by men in whose blood 
there still raced some of the gleeful or sol- 
emn exultation of great art — Millet who loved 
dignity like Michelangelo, Rousseau whose 
modern brush was dipped in the glamour of the 
ancients. It was chosen before the day of that 
strange turn in the history of art, of which we 
now perceive the culmination in impressionistic 
tales and pictures — that voluntary aversion of 
the eye from all speciously strong and beautiful 
effects — that disinterested love of dulness which 
has set so many Peter Bells to paint the river-side 
primrose. It was then chosen for its proximity 
to Paris. And for the same cause, and by the 



no Fontainebleau 

force of tradition, the painter of to-day con- 
tinues to inhabit and to paint it. There is 
in France scenery incomparable for romance 
and harmony. Provence, and the valley of 
the Rhone from Vienne to Tarascon, are one 
succession of masterpieces waiting for the 
brush. The beauty is not merely beauty; it 
tells, besides, a tale to the imagination, and 
surprises while it charms. Here you shall see 
castellated towns that would befit the scenery 
of dreamland; streets that glow with colour 
like cathedral windows; hills of the most 
exquisite proportions ; flowers of every precious 
colour, growing thick like grass. All these, 
by the grace of railway travel, are brought 
to the very door of the modern painter; yet 
he does not seek them; he remains faithful 
to Fontainebleau, to the eternal bridge of 
Gretz, to the watering-pot cascade in Cernay 
valley. Even Fontainebleau was chosen for 
him; even in Fontainebleau he shrinks from 
what is sharply charactered. But one thing, 
at least, is certain, whatever he may choose 
to paint and in whatever manner, it is good 
for the artist to dwell among graceful shapes. 



Fontainebleau 1 1 1 

Fontainebleau, if it be but quiet scenery, is 
classically graceful ; and though the student 
may look for different qualities, this quality, 
silently present, will educate his hand and eye. 

But, before all its other advantages — charm, 
loveliness, or proximity to Paris — comes the 
great fact that it is already colonised. The 
institution of a painters' colony is a work of time 
and tact. The population must be conquered. 
The inn-keeper has to be taught, and he soon 
learns, the lesson of unlimited credit ; he must 
be taught to welcome as a favoured guest a 
young gentleman in a very greasy coat, and 
with little baggage beyond a box of colours 
and a canvas ; and he must learn to preserve 
his faith in customers who will eat heartily and 
drink of the best, borrow money to buy 
tobacco, and perhaps not pay a stiver for a 
year. A colour merchant has next to be 
attracted. A certain vogue must be given to 
the place, lest the painter, most gregarious of 
animals, should find himself alone. And no 
sooner are these first difficulties overcome, 
than fresh perils spring up upon the other 
side; and the bourgeois and the tourist are 



1 1 2 Fontainebleau 

knocking at the gate. This is the crucial 
moment for the colony. If these intruders 
gain a footing, they not only banish freedom 
and amenity; pretty soon, by means of their 
long purses, they will have undone the educa- 
tion of the innkeeper; prices will rise and 
credit shorten ; and the poor painter must 
fare farther on and find another hamlet. 
* Not here, O Apollo ! ' will become his song. 
Thus Trouville and, the other day, St. Raphael 
were lost to the arts. Curious and not always 
edifying are the shifts that the French student 
uses to defend his lair; like the cuttlefish, 
he must sometimes blacken the waters of his 
chosen pool; Jmt at such a time and for so 
practical a purpose Mrs. Grundy must allow 
him licence. Where his own purse and credit 
are not threatened, he will do the honours of 
his village generously. Any artist is made 
welcome, through whatever medium he may 
seek expression ; science is respected ; even 
the idler, if he prove, as he so rarely does, a 
gentleman, will soon begin to find himself at 
home. And when that essentially modern 
creature, the English or American girl-student, 



Fontainebleau 1 1 3 

began to walk calmly into his favourite inns 
as if into a drawing-room at home, the French 
painter owned himself defenceless; he sub- 
mitted or he fled. His French respectability, 
quite as precise as ours, though covering 
different provinces of life, recoiled aghast 
before the innovation. But the girls were 
painters ; there was nothing to be done ; and 
Barbizon, when I last saw it and for the time 
at least, was practically ceded to the fair 
invader. Paterfamilias, on the other hand, the 
common tourist, the holiday shopman, and the 
cheap young gentleman upon the spree, he 
hounded from his villages with every circum- 
stance of contumely. 

This purely artistic society is excellent for 
the young artist. The lads are mostly fools; 
they hold the latest orthodoxy in its crudeness ; 
they are at that stage of education, for the 
most part, when a man is too much occupied 
with style to be aware of the necessity for any 
matter ; and this, above all for the Englishman, 
is excellent. To work grossly at the trade, to 
forget sentiment, to think of his material and 
nothing else, is, for awhile at least, the king's 



H4 Fontainebleau 

highway of progress. Here, in England, too 
many painters and writers dwell dispersed, 
unshielded, among the intelligent bourgeois. 
These, when they are not merely indifferent, 
prate to him about the lofty aims and moral 
influence of art. And this is the lad's ruin. 
For art is, first of all and last of all, a trade. 
The love of words and not a desire to publish 
new discoveries, the love of form and not a 
novel reading of historical events, mark the 
vocation of the writer and the painter. The 
arabesque, properly speaking, and even in 
literature, is the first fancy of the artist; he 
first plays with his material as a child plays 
with a kaleidoscope ; and he is already in a 
second stage when he begins to use his pretty 
counters for the end of representation. In 
that, he must pause long and toil faithfully; 
that is his apprenticeship; and it is only the 
few who will really grow beyond it, and go 
forward, fully equipped, to do the business of 
real art — to give life to abstractions and signifi- 
cance and charm to facts. In the meanwhile, 
let him dwell much among his fellow-craftsmen. 
They alone can take a serious interest in the 



Fontainebleau 115 

childish tasks and pitiful successes of these 
years. They alone can behold with equanimity 
this fingering of the dumb keyboard, this 
polishing of empty sentences, this dull and 
literal painting of dull and insignificant sub- 
jects. Outsiders will spur him on. They will 
say, ' Why do you not write a great book ? 
paint a great picture ? ■ If his guardian angel 
fail him, they may even persuade him to the 
attempt, and, ten to one, his hand is coarsened 
and his style falsified for life. 

And this brings me to a warning. The life 
of the apprentice to any art is both unstrained 
and pleasing ; it is strewn with small successes 
in the midst of a career of failure, patiently 
supported ; the heaviest scholar is conscious of 
a certain progress; and if he come not appre- 
ciably nearer to the art of Shakespeare, grows 
letter-perfect in the domain of A-B, ab. But 
the time comes when a man should cease pre- 
lusory gymnastic, stand up, put a violence upon 
his will, and for better or worse, begin the 
business of creation. This evil day there is a 
tendency continually to postpone : above all 
with painters. They have made so many 



n6 Fontainebleau 

studies that it has become a habit; they 
make more, the walls of exhibitions blush with 
them ; and death finds these aged students 
still busy with their horn-book. This class of 
man finds a congenial home in artist villages; 
in the slang of the English colony at Bar- 
bizon we used to call them ' Snoozers.' Con- 
tinual returns to the city, the society of men 
farther advanced, the study of great works, 
a sense of humour or, if such a thing is to 
be had, a little religion or philosophy, are the 
means of treatment. It will be time enough to 
think of curing the malady after it has been 
caught; for to catch it is the very thing for 
which you seek that dream-land of the painters' 
village. ■ Snoozing ' is a part of the artistic 
education ; and the rudiments must be learned 
stupidly, all else being forgotten, as if they were 
an object in themselves. 

Lastly, there is something, or there seems to 
be something, in the very air of France that 
communicates the love of style. Precision, 
clarity, the cleanly and crafty employment of 
material, a grace in the handling, apart from 
any value in the thought, seem to be acquired 



Fontainebleau 1 1 7 

by the mere residence ; or if not acquired, 
become at least the more appreciated. The air 
of Paris is alive with this technical inspiration. 
And to leave that airy city and awake next 
day upon the borders of the forest is but to 
change externals. The same spirit of dexterity 
and finish breathes from the long alleys and the 
lofty groves, from the wildernesses that are still 
pretty in their confusion, and the great plain 
that contrives to be decorative in its empti- 
ness. 



II 



In spite of its really considerable extent, the 
forest of Fontainebleau is hardly anywhere 
tedious. I know the whole western side of it 
with what, I suppose, I may call thoroughness ; 
well enough at least to testify that there is no 
square mile without some special character and 
charm. Such quarters, for instance, as the 
Long Rocher, the Bas-Breau, and the Reine 
Blanche, might be a hundred miles apart ; 
they have scarce a point in common beyond 
the silence of the birds. The two last are 



1 1 8 Fontainebleau 

really conterminous ; and in both are tall and 
ancient trees that have outlived a thousand 
political vicissitudes. But in the one the great 
oaks prosper placidly upon an even floor ; they 
beshadow a great field; and the air and the 
light are very free below their stretching boughs. 
In the other the trees find difficult footing ; 
castles of white rock lie tumbled one upon 
another, the foot slips, the crooked viper slum- 
bers, the moss clings in the crevice ; and above 
it all the great beech goes spiring and casting 
forth her arms, and, with a grace beyond church 
architecture, canopies this rugged chaos. Mean- 
while, dividing the two cantons, the broad white 
causeway of the Paris road runs in an avenue : 
a road conceived for pageantry and for triumphal 
marches, an avenue for an army ; but, its days 
of glory over, it now lies grilling in the sun 
between cool groves, and only at intervals the 
vehicle of the cruising tourist is seen far away 
and faintly audible along its ample sweep. A 
little upon one side, and you find a district of 
sand and birch and boulder ; a little upon the 
other lies the valley of Apremont, all juniper 
and heather ; and close beyond that you may 



Fontainebleau 119 

walk into a zone of pine trees. So artfully are 
the ingredients mingled. Nor must it be for- 
gotten that, in all this part, you come continu- 
ally forth upon a hill-top, and behold the plain, 
northward and westward, like an unrefulgent 
sea; nor that all day long the shadows keep 
changing ; and at last, to the red fires of sun- 
set, night succeeds, and with the night a new 
forest, full of whisper, gloom, and fragrance. 
There are few things more renovating than to 
leave Paris, the lamplit arches of the Carrousel, 
and the long alignment of the glittering streets, 
and to bathe the senses in this fragrant dark- 
ness of the wood. 

In this continual variety the mind is kept 
vividly alive. It is a changeful place to paint, 
a stirring place to live in. As fast as your foot 
carries you, you pass from scene to scene, each 
vigorously painted in the colours of the sun, 
each endeared by that hereditary spell of forests 
on the mind of man who still remembers and 
salutes the ancient refuge of his race. 

And yet the forest has been civilised through- 
out. The most savage corners bear a name, 
and have been cherished like antiquities; in 



1 20 Fontai7iebleau 

the most remote, Nature has prepared and 
balanced her effects as if with conscious art ; 
and man, with his guiding arrows of blue 
paint, has countersigned the picture. After 
your farthest wandering, you are never sur- 
prised to come forth upon the vast avenue of 
highway, to strike the centre point of branch- 
ing alleys, or to find the aqueduct trailing, 
thousand-footed, through the brush. It is not 
a wilderness; it is rather a preserve. And, 
fitly enough, the centre of the maze is not a 
hermit's cavern. In the midst, a little mirthful 
town lies sunlit, humming with the business of 
pleasure ; and the palace, breathing distinction 
and peopled by historic names, stands smoke- 
less among gardens. 

Perhaps the last attempt at savage life was 
that of the harmless humbug who called him- 
self the hermit. In a great tree, close by the 
high-road, he had built himself a little cabin 
after the manner of the Swiss Family Robinson ; 
thither he mounted at night, by the romantic 
aid of a rope ladder ; and if dirt be any proof 
of sincerity, the man was savage as a Sioux. 
I had the pleasure of his acquaintance; he 



Fontainebleau 1 2 1 

appeared grossly stupid, not in his perfect wits, 
and interested in nothing but small change ; 
for that he had a great avidity. In the course 
of time he proved to be a chicken-stealer, and 
vanished from his perch; and perhaps from 
the first he was no true votary of forest free- 
dom, but an ingenious, theatrically-minded 
beggar, and his cabin in the tree was only 
stock-in-trade to beg withal. The choice of 
his position would seem to indicate so much; 
for if in the forest there are no places still to 
be discovered, there are many that have been 
forgotten, and that lie unvisited. There, to be 
sure, are the blue arrows waiting to reconduct 
you, now blazed upon a tree, now posted in 
the corner of a rock. But your security from 
interruption is complete; you might camp for 
weeks, if there were only water, and not a soul 
suspect your presence; and if I may suppose 
the reader to have committed some great crime 
and come to me for aid, I think I could still 
find my way to a small cavern, fitted with a 
hearth and chimney, where he might lie per- 
fectly concealed. A confederate landscape- 
painter might daily supply him with food; 



122 Fontainebleau 

for water, he would have to make a nightly 
tramp as far as to the nearest pond; and at 
last, when the hue and cry began to blow 
over, he might get gently on the train at 
some side station, work round by a series of 
junctions, and be quietly captured at the 
frontier. 

Thus Fontainebleau, although it is truly but 
a pleasure-ground, and although, in favourable 
weather, and in the more celebrated quarters, 
it literally buzzes with the tourist, yet has 
some of the immunities and offers some of 
the repose of natural forests. And the solitary, 
although he must return at night to his fre- 
quented inn, may yet pass the day with his 
own thoughts in the companionable silence of 
the trees. The demands of the imagination 
vary; some can be alone in a back garden 
looked upon by windows ; others, like the 
ostrich, are content with a solitude that meets 
the eye; and others, again, expand in fancy 
to the very borders of their desert, and are 
irritably conscious of a hunter's camp in an 
adjacent county. To these last, of course, 
Fontainebleau will seem but an extended tea- 



Fontainebleau 123 

garden : a Rosherville on a by-day. But to the 
plain man it offers solitude : an excellent thing 
in itself, and a good whet for company. 



Ill 

I was for some time a consistent Barbi- 
zonian ; et ego in Arcadia vixi y it was a pleasant 
season; and that noiseless hamlet lying close 
among the borders of the wood is for me, as 
for so many others, a green spot in memory. 
The great Millet was just dead, the green 
shutters of his modest house were closed; 
his daughters were in mourning. The date 
of my first visit was thus an epoch in the 
history of art: in a lesser way, it was an 
epoch in the history of the Latin Quarter. 
The Petit Cinacle was dead and buried; 
Murger and his crew of sponging vagabonds 
were all at rest from their expedients; the 
tradition of their real life was nearly lost; 
and the petrified legend of the Vie de Boheme 
had become a sort of gospel, and still gave 
the cue to zealous imitators. But if the book 
be written in rose-water, the imitation was 



124 Fontainebleau 

still farther expurgated ; honesty was the rule ; 
the innkeepers gave, as I have said, almost 
unlimited credit; they suffered the seediest 
painter to depart, to take all his belongings, 
and to leave his bill unpaid ; and if they 
sometimes lost, it was by English and Ameri- 
cans alone. At the same time, the great 
influx of Anglo-Saxons had begun to affect 
the life of the studious. There had been dis- 
putes ; and, in one instance at least, the 
English and the Americans had made common 
cause to prevent a cruel pleasantry. It would 
be well if nations and races could communicate 
their qualities ; but in practice when they look 
upon each other, they have an eye to nothing 
but defects. The Anglo-Saxon is essentially 
dishonest; the French is devoid by nature of 
the principle that we call ■ Fair Play.' The 
Frenchman marvelled at the scruples of his 
guest, and, when that defender of innocence 
retired over-seas and left his bills unpaid, he 
marvelled once again ; the good and evil were, 
in his eyes, part and parcel of the same eccen- 
tricity; a shrug expressed his judgment upon 
both. 



Foil ta ineblea u 125 

At Barbizon there was no master, no pontiff 
in the arts. Palizzi bore rule at Gretz — urbane, 
superior rule — his memory rich in anecdotes of 
the great men of yore, his mind fertile in 
theories ; sceptical, composed, and venerable to 
the eye; and yet beneath these outworks, all 
twittering with Italian superstition, his eye 
scouting for omens, and the whole fabric of his 
manners giving way on the appearance of a 
hunchback. Cernay had Pelouse, the admira- 
ble, placid Pelouse, smilingly critical of youth, 
who, when a full-blown commercial traveller 
suddenly threw down his samples, bought a 
colour-box, and became the master whom we 
have all admired. Marlotte, for a central 
figure, boasted Olivier de Penne. Only Barbi- 
zon, since the death of Millet, was a headless 
commonwealth. Even its secondary lights, and 
those who in my day made the stranger 
welcome, have since deserted it. The good 
Lachevre has departed, carrying his household 
gods; and long before that Gaston Lafenestre 
was taken from our midst by an untimely 
death. He died before he had deserved 
success ; it may be, he would never have 



126 Fontainebleau 

deserved it; but his kind, comely, modest 
countenance still haunts the memory of all who 
knew him. Another — whom I will not name 
— has moved farther on, pursuing the strange 
Odyssey of his decadence. His days of royal 
favour had departed even then; but he still 
retained, in his narrower life at Barbizon, a 
certain stamp of conscious importance, hearty, 
friendly, filling the room, the occupant of 
several chairs ; nor had he yet ceased his losing 
battle, still labouring upon great canvases that 
none would buy, still waiting the return of 
fortune. But these days also were too good to 
last ; and the former favourite of two sovereigns 
fled, if I heard the truth, by night. There was 
a time when he was counted a great man, and 
Millet but a dauber ; behold, how the whirligig 
of time brings in his revenges ! To pity Millet 
is a piece of arrogance ; if life be hard for such 
resolute and pious spirits, it is harder still for 
us, had we the wit to understand it; but we 
may pity his unhappier rival, who, for no appar- 
ent merit, was raised to opulence and momen- 
tary fame, and, through no apparent fault, was 
suffered step by step to sink again to nothing. 



Fonta ineblea u 127 

No misfortune can exceed the bitterness of 
such back-foremost progress, even bravely sup- 
ported as it was ; but to those also who were 
taken early from the easel, a regret is due. 
From all the young men of this period, one 
stood out by the vigour of his promise ; he was 
in the age of fermentation, enamoured of 
eccentricities. * II faut faire de la peinture 
nouvelle,' was his watchword ; but if time and 
experience had continued his education, if he 
had been granted health to return from these 
excursions to the steady and the central, I must 
believe that the name of Hills had become 
famous. 

Siron's inn, that excellent artists' barrack, 
was managed upon easy principles. At any 
hour of the night, when you returned from 
wandering in the forest, you went to the bil- 
liard-room and helped yourself to liquors, or 
descended to the cellar and returned laden with 
beer or wine. The Sirons were all locked in 
slumber ; there was none to check your in- 
roads ; only at the week's end a computation 
was made, the gross sum was divided, and a 
varying share set down to every lodger's name 



128 Fontainebleau 

under the rubric : estrats. Upon the more 
long-suffering the larger tax was levied ; and 
your bill lengthened in a direct proportion to 
the easiness of your disposition. At any hour 
of the morning, again, you could get your coffee 
or cold milk, and set forth into the forest. The 
doves had perhaps wakened you, fluttering into 
your chamber ; and on the threshold of the inn 
you were met by the aroma of the forest. 
Close by were the great aisles, the mossy 
boulders, the interminable field of forest shadow. 
There you were free to dream and wander. 
And at noon, and again at six o'clock, a good 
meal awaited you on Siron's table. The whole 
of your accommodation, set aside that varying 
item of the estrats, cost you five francs a day ; 
your bill was never offered you until you asked 
it; and if you were out of luck's way, you 
might depart for where you pleased and leave 
it pending. 



IV 



Theoretically, the house was open to all 
comers; practically, it was a kind of club. 



Fontainebleau 129 

The guests protected themselves, and, in so 
doing, they protected Siron. Formal manners 
being laid aside, essential courtesy was the 
more rigidly exacted; the new arrival had to 
feel the pulse of the society ; and a breach 
of its undefined observances was promptly 
punished. A man might be as plain, as dull, 
as slovenly, as free of speech as he desired; 
but to a touch of presumption or a word of 
hectoring these free Barbizonians were as 
sensitive as a tea-party of maiden ladies. I 
have seen people driven forth from Barbizon; 
it would be difficult to say in words what they 
had done, but they deserved their fate. They 
had shown themselves unworthy to enjoy these 
corporate freedoms; they had pushed them- 
selves ; they had ' made their head ' ; they 
wanted tact to appreciate the ' fine shades ' of 
Barbizonian etiquette. And once they were 
condemned, the process of extrusion was ruth- 
less in its cruelty ; after one evening with the 
formidable Bodmer, the Baily of our common- 
wealth, the erring stranger was beheld no more ; 
he rose exceeding early the next day, and 
the first coach conveyed him from the scene 



1 30 Fontainebleau 

of his discomfiture. These sentences of banish- 
ment were never, in my knowledge, delivered 
against an artist ; such would, I believe, have 
been illegal; but the odd and pleasant fact 
is this, that they were never needed. Painters, 
sculptors, writers, singers, I have seen all of 
these in Barbizon; and some were sulky, and 
some blatant and inane ; but one and all entered 
at once into the spirit of the association. This 
singular society is purely French, a creature 
of French virtues, and possibly of French 
defects. It cannot be imitated by the English. 
The roughness, the impatience, the more 
obvious selfishness, and even the more ardent 
friendships of the Anglo-Saxon, speedily dis- 
member such a commonwealth. But this 
random gathering of young French painters, 
with neither apparatus nor parade of govern- 
ment, yet kept the life of the place upon a 
certain footing, insensibly imposed their eti- 
quette upon the docile, and by caustic speech 
enforced their edicts against the unwelcome. 
To think of it is to wonder the more at the 
strange failure of their race upon the larger 
theatre. This inbred civility — to use the word 



JFontainebleau 131 

in its completest meaning — this natural and 
facile adjustment of contending liberties, seems 
all that is required to make a governable nation 
and a just and prosperous country. 

Our society, thus purged and guarded, was 
full of high spirits, of laughter, and of the 
initiative of youth. The few elder men who 
joined us were still young at heart, and took 
the key from their companions. We returned 
from long stations in the fortifying air, our 
blood renewed by the sunshine, our spirits 
refreshed by the silence of the forest; the 
Babel of loud voices sounded good ; we fell to 
eat and play like the natural man ; and in the 
high inn chamber, panelled with indifferent 
pictures and lit by candles guttering in the 
night air, the talk and laughter sounded far 
into the night. It was a good place and a 
good life for any naturally-minded youth ; 
better yet for the student of painting, and 
perhaps best of all for the student of letters. 
He, too, was saturated in this atmosphere of 
style; he was shut out from the disturbing 
currents of the world, he might forget that 
there existed other and more pressing interests 



132 Fontainebleau 

than that of art. But, in such a place, it was 
hardly possible to write; he could not drug 
his conscience, like the painter, by the pro- 
duction of listless studies ; he saw himself idle 
among many who were apparently, and some 
who were really, employed ; and what with 
the impulse of increasing health and the con- 
tinual provocation of romantic scenes, he 
became tormented with the desire to work. 
He enjoyed a strenuous idleness full of visions, 
hearty meals, long, sweltering walks, mirth 
among companions ; and still floating like 
music through his brain, foresights of great 
works that Shakespeare might be proud to 
have conceived, headless epics, glorious torsos 
of dramas, and words that were alive with 
import. So in youth, like Moses from the 
mountain, we have sights of that House 
Beautiful of art which we shall never enter. 
They are dreams and unsubstantial ; visions 
of style that repose upon no base of human 
meaning; the last heart-throbs of that excited 
amateur who has to die in all of us before the 
artist can be born. But they come to us in 
such a rainbow of glory that all subsequent 



Fon ta inebleau 1 3 3 

achievement appears dull and earthly in com- 
parison. We were all artists ; almost all in 
the age of illusion, cultivating an imaginary 
genius, and walking to the strains of some 
deceiving Ariel ; small wonder, indeed, if we 
were happy ! But art, of whatever nature, is 
a kind mistress; and though these dreams of 
youth fall by their own baselessness, others 
succeed, graver and more substantial; the 
symptoms change, the amiable malady en- 
dures ; and still, at an equal distance, the 
House Beautiful shines upon its hill-top. 



Gretz lies out of the forest, down by the 
bright river. It boasts a mill, an ancient 
church, a castle, and a bridge of many sterlings. 
And the bridge is a piece of public property ; 
anonymously famous ; beaming on the incurious 
dilettante from the walls of a hundred exhibi- 
tions. I have seen it in the Salon ; I have 
seen it in the Academy ; I have seen it in the 
last French Exposition, excellently done by 
Bloomer ; in a black-and-white, by Mr. A. Hen- 
ley, it once adorned this essay in the pages of 



1 34 Fontainebleati 

the Magazine of Art. Long-suffering bridge ! 
And if you visit Gretz to-morrow, you shall find 
another generation, camped at the bottom of 
Chevillon's garden under their white umbrellas, 
and doggedly painting it again. 

The bridge taken for granted, Gretz is a less 
inspiring place than Barbizon. I give it the 
palm over Cernay. There is something ghastly 
in the great empty village square of Cernay, 
with the inn tables standing in one corner, as 
though the stage were set for rustic opera, and 
in the early morning all the painters breaking 
their fast upon white wine under the windows 
of the villagers. It is vastly different to awake 
in Gretz, to go down the green inn-garden, to 
find the river streaming through the bridge, and 
to see the dawn begin across the poplared level. 
The meals are laid in the cool arbour, under 
fluttering leaves. The splash of oars and 
bathers, the bathing costumes out to dry, the 
trim canoes beside the jetty, tell of a society 
that has an eye to pleasure. There is 'some- 
thing to do ' at Gretz. Perhaps, for that very 
reason, I can recall no such enduring ardours, 
no such glories of exhilaration, as among the 



Fontainebleau 1 35 

solemn groves and uneventful hours of Barbizon. 
This ' something to do ' is a great enemy to 
joy; it is a way out of it; you wreak your 
high spirits on some cut-and-dry employment, 
and behold them gone ! But Gretz is a merry 
place after its kind : pretty to see, merry to in- 
habit. The course of its pellucid river, whether 
up or down, is full of gentle attractions for 
the navigator : islanded reed-mazes where, in 
autumn, the red berries cluster ; the mirrored 
and inverted images of trees; lilies, and mills, 
and the foam and thunder of weirs. And of 
all noble sweeps of roadway, none is nobler, on 
a windy dusk, than the high road to Nemours 
between its lines of talking poplar. 

But even Gretz is changed. The old inn, 
long shored and trussed and buttressed, fell at 
length under the mere weight of years, and the 
place as it was is but a fading image in the 
memory of former guests. They, indeed, recall 
the ancient wooden stair ; they recall the rainy 
evening, the wide hearth, the blaze of the twig 
fire, and the company that gathered round the 
pillar in the kitchen. But the material fabric 
is now dust ; soon, with the last of its inhabit- 



1 36 Fontainebleau 

ants, its very memory shall follow; and they, 
in their turn, shall suffer the same law, and, 
both in name and lineament, vanish from the 
world of men. ' For remembrance of the old 
house' sake,' as Pepys once quaintly put it, let 
me tell one story. When the tide of invasion 
swept over France, two foreign painters were 
left stranded and penniless in Gretz ; and there, 
until the war was over, the Chevillons ungrudg- 
ingly harboured them. It was difficult to 
obtain supplies; but the two waifs were still 
welcome to the best, sat down daily with the 
family to table, and at the due intervals were 
supplied with clean napkins, which they scrupled 
to employ. Madame Chevillon observed the 
fact and reprimanded them. But they stood 
firm ; eat they must, but having no money they 
would soil no napkins. 



VI 



Nemours and Moret, for all they are so pic- 
turesque, have been little visited by painters. 
They are, indeed, too populous; they have 
manners of their own, and might resist the 



Fontainebleau 137 

drastic process of colonisation. Montigny has 
been somewhat strangely neglected, I never 
knew it inhabited but once, when Will H. Low 
installed himself there with a barrel of piquette, 
and entertained his friends in a leafy trellis 
above the weir, in sight of the green country 
and to the music of the falling water. It was a 
most airy, quaint, and pleasant place of resi- 
dence, just too rustic ' to be stagey ; and from 
my memories of the place in general, and that 
garden trellis in particular — at morning, visited 
by birds, or at night, when the dew fell and the 
stars were of the party — I am inclined to think 
perhaps too favourably of the future of Mon- 
tigny. Chailly-en-Biere has outlived all things, 
and lies dustily slumbering in the plain — the 
cemetery of itself. The great road remains to 
testify of its former bustle of postilions and 
carriage bells ; and, like memorial tablets, there 
still hang in the inn room the paintings of a 
former generation, dead or decorated long ago. 
In my time, one man only, greatly daring, 
dwelt there. From time to time he would walk 
over to Barbizon, like a shade revisiting the 
glimpses of the moon, and after some communi- 



1 38 Fontainebleau 

cation with flesh and blood return to his austere 
hermitage. But even he, when I last revisited 
the forest, had come to Barbizon for good, and 
closed the roll of Chaillyites. It may revive — 
but I much doubt it. Acheres and Recloses 
still wait a pioneer; Bourron is out of the 
question, being merely Gretz over again, with- 
out the river, the bridge, or the beauty ; and of 
all the possible places on the western side, 
Marlotte alone remains to be discussed. I 
scarcely know Marlotte, and, very likely for 
that reason, am not much in love with it. It 
seems a glaring and unsightly hamlet. The inn 
of Mother Antonie is unattractive; and its 
more reputable rival, though comfortable enough, 
is commonplace. Marlotte has a name; it is 
famous; if I were the young painter I would 
leave it alone in its glory. 



VII 



These are the words of an old stager; and 
though time is a good conservative in forest 
places, much may be untrue to-day. Many of 
us have passed Arcadian days there and moved 



Fontainebleau 1 39 

on, but yet left a portion of our souls behind 
us buried in the woods. I would not dig 
for these reliquiae ; they are incommunicable 
treasures that will not enrich the finder; and 
yet there may lie, interred below great oaks or 
scattered along forest paths, stores of youth's 
dynamite and dear remembrances. And as 
one generation passes on and renovates the 
field of tillage for the next, I entertain a fancy 
that when the young men of to-day go forth 
into the forest they shall find the air still 
vitalised by the spirits of their predecessors, 
and, like those * unheard melodies ' that are the 
sweetest of all, the memory of our laughter 
shall still haunt the field of trees. Those 
merry voices that in woods call the wanderer 
farther, those thrilling silences and whispers of 
the groves, surely in Fontainebleau they must 
be vocal of me and my companions ? We are 
not content to pass away entirely from the 
scenes of our delight; we would leave, if but 
in gratitude, a pillar and a legend. 

One generation after another fall like honey- 
bees upon this memorable forest, rifle its sweets, 
pack themselves with vital memories, and when 



140 Fontainebleau 

the theft is consummated depart again into 
life richer, but poorer also. The forest, indeed, 
they have possessed, from that day forward it 
is theirs indissolubly, and they will return to 
walk in it at night in the fondest of their 
dreams, and use it for ever in their books and 
pictures. Yet when they made their packets, 
and put up their notes and sketches, something, 
it should seem, had been forgotten. A pro- 
jection of themselves shall appear to haunt 
unfriended these scenes of happiness, a natural 
child of fancy, begotten and forgotten unawares. 
Over the whole field of our wanderings such 
fetches are still travelling like indefatigable 
bagmen; but the imps of Fontainebleau, as of 
all beloved spots, are very long of life, and 
memory is piously unwilling to forget their 
orphanage. If anywhere about that wood you 
meet my airy bantling, greet him with tender- 
ness. He was a pleasant lad, though now 
abandoned. And when it comes to your own 
turn to quit the forest may you leave behind 
you such another; no Antony or Werther, 
let us hope, no tearful whipster, but, as be- 
comes this not uncheerful and most active 



Fori ta in ebleau 141 

age in which we figure, the child of happy- 
hours. 

No art, it may be said, was ever perfect, 
and not many noble, that has not been mirth- 
fully conceived. And no man, it may be 
added, was ever anything but a wet blanket 
and a cross to his companions who boasted 
not a copious spirit of enjoyment. Whether 
as man or artist, let the youth make haste to 
Fontainebleau, and once there let him address 
himself to the spirit of the place ; he will learn 
more from exercise than from studies, although 
both are necessary ; and if he can get into his 
heart the gaiety and inspiration of the woods 
he will have gone far to undo the evil of his 
sketches. A spirit once well strung up to the 
concert-pitch of the primeval out-of-doors will 
hardly dare to finish a study and magniloquently 
ticket it a picture. The incommunicable thrill 
of things, that is the tuning-fork by which we 
test the flatness of our art. Here it is that 
Nature teaches and condemns, and still spurs 
up to further effort and new failure. Thus it 
is that she sets us blushing at our ignorant and 
tepid works; and the more we find of these 



142 Fontainebleau 

inspiring shocks the less shall we be apt to love 
the literal in our productions. In all sciences 
and senses the letter kills; and to-day, when 
cackling human geese express their ignorant 
condemnation of all studio pictures, it is a 
lesson most useful to be learnt. Let the 
young painter go to Fontainebleau, and while 
he stupefies himself with studies that teach him 
the mechanical side of his trade, let him walk 
in the great air, and be a servant of mirth, and 
not pick and botanise, but wait upon the moods 
of nature. So he will learn — or learn not to 
forget — the poetry of life and earth, which, 
when he has acquired his track, will save him 
from joyless reproduction. 

[1882.] 



IV 

EPILOGUE 
TO 'AN INLAND VOYAGE' 1 

The country where they journeyed, that green, 
breezy valley of the Loing, is one very attrac- 
tive to cheerful and solitary people. The 
weather was superb ; all night it thundered and 
lightened, and the rain fell in sheets ; by day, 
the heavens were cloudless, the sun fervent, 
the air vigorous and pure. They walked 
separate : the Cigarette plodding behind with 
some philosophy, the lean Arethusa posting on 
ahead. Thus each enjoyed his own reflections 
by the way ; each had perhaps time to tire of 
them before he met his comrade at the desig- 
nated inn; and the pleasures of society and 
solitude combined to fill the day. The Are- 

1 See An Inland Voyage, by Robert Louis Stevenson, 
1878. 

143 



144 Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage** 

thusa carried in his knapsack the works of 
Charles of Orleans, and employed some of the 
hours of travel in the concoction of English 
roundels. In this path, he must thus have 
preceded Mr. Lang, Mr. Dobson, Mr. Henley, 
and all contemporary roundeleers ; but for good 
reasons, he will be the last to publish the result. 
The Cigarette walked burthened with a volume 
of Michelet. And both these books, it will 
be seen, played a part in the subsequent ad- 
venture. 

The Arethusa was unwisely dressed. He is 
no precisian in attire; but by all accounts, he 
was never so ill-inspired as on that tramp; 
having set forth indeed, upon a moment's 
notice, from the most unfashionable spot in 
Europe, Barbizon. On his head, he wore a 
smoking-cap of Indian work, the gold lace 
pitifully frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt 
of an agreeable dark hue, which the satirical 
called black; a light tweed coat made by a 
good English tailor; ready-made cheap linen 
trousers and leathern gaiters completed his 
array. In person, he is exceptionally lean ; 
and his face is not like those of happier 



Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage'' 145 

mortals, a certificate. For years he could not 
pass a frontier or visit a bank without sus- 
picion ; the police everywhere, but in his 
native city, looked askance upon him ; and 
(though I am sure it will not be credited) he 
is actually denied admittance to the casino of 
Monte Carlo. If you will imagine him, dressed 
as above, stooping under his knapsack, walking 
nearly five miles an hour with the folds of 
the ready-made trousers fluttering about his 
spindle shanks, and still looking eagerly round 
him as if in terror of pursuit — the figure, when 
realised, is far from reassuring. When Villon 
journeyed (perhaps by the same pleasant val- 
ley) to his exile at Roussillon, I wonder if he 
had not something of the same appearance. 
Something of the same preoccupation he had 
beyond a doubt, for he too must have tinkered 
verses as he walked, with more success than 
his successor. And if he had anything like 
the same inspiring weather, the same nights of 
uproar, men in armour rolling and resounding 
down the stairs of heaven, the rain hissing on 
the village streets, the wild bull's-eye of the 
storm flashing all night long into the bare inn- 



146 Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage* 

chamber — the same sweet return of day, the 
same unfathomable blue of noon, the same 
high-coloured, halcyon eves — and above all 
if he had anything like as good a comrade, 
anything like as keen a relish for what he saw, 
and what he ate, and the rivers that he bathed 
in, and the rubbish that he wrote, I would ex- 
change estates to-day with the poor exile, and 
count myself a gainer. 

But there was another point of similarity 
between the two journeys, for which the 
Arethusa was to pay dear: both were gone 
upon in days of incomplete security. It was 
not long after the Franco-Prussian war. Swiftly 
as men forget, that country-side was still alive 
with tales of uhlans, and outlying sentries, and 
hairbreadth 'scapes from t-he ignominious cord, 
and pleasant momentary friendships between 
invader and invaded. A year, at the most 
two years later, you might have tramped all 
that country over and not heard one anecdote. 
And a year or two later, you would — if you 
were a rather ill-looking young man in nonde- 
script array — have gone your rounds in greater 
safety ; for along with more interesting matter, 



Epilogue to ''An Inland Voyage'' 147 

the Prussian spy would have somewhat faded 
from men's imaginations. 

For all that, our voyager had got beyond 
Chateau Renard before he was conscious of 
arousing wonder. On the road between that 
place and Chatillon-sur-Loing, however, he 
encountered a rural postman ; they fell together 
in talk, and spoke of a variety of subjects; 
but through one and all, the postman was 
still visibly preoccupied, and his eyes were 
faithful to the Arethusa's knapsack. At last, 
with mysterious roguishness, he inquired what 
it contained, and on being answered, shook his 
head with kindly incredulity. ' Non,' said he, 
'nont vous avez des portraits. y And then with 
a languishing appeal, ' Voyons, show me the 
portraits ! ' It was some little while before 
the Arethusa, with a shout of laughter, recog- 
nised his drift. By portraits he meant indecent 
photographs; and in the Arethusa, an austere 
and rising author, he thought to have identified 
a pornographic colporteur. When country- 
folk in France have made up their minds as to 
a person's calling, argument is fruitless. Along 
all the rest of the way, the postman piped and 



148 Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage' 

fluted meltingly to 'get a sight of the collec- 
tion ; now he would upbraid, now he would 
reason — * Voyons, I will tell nobody ' ; then he 
tried corruption, and insisted on paying for a 
glass of wine ; and, at last, when their ways 
separated — ' Non,' said he, ' ce ri est pas bien de 
votre part. O non, ce n est pas bien' And 
shaking his head with quite a sentimental sense 
of injury, he departed unrefreshed. 

On certain little difficulties encountered by 
the Arethusa at Chatillon-sur-Loing, I have 
not space to dwell ; another Chatillon, of 
grislier memory, looms too near at hand. But 
the next day, in a certain hamlet called La 
Jussiere, he stopped to drink a glass of syrup 
in a very poor, bare drinking shop. The 
hostess, a comely woman, suckling a child, 
examined the traveller with kindly and pitying 
eyes. ■ You are not of this department ? ' she 
asked. The Arethusa told her he was English. 
'Ah!' she said, surprised. 'We have no 
English. We have many Italians, however, 
and they do very well; they do not complain 
of the people of hereabouts. An Englishman 
may do very well also; it will be something 



Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage' 149 

new.' Here was a dark saying, over which the 
Arethusa pondered as he drank his grenadine ; 
but when he rose and asked what was to pay, 
the light came upon him in a flash. ' O, pour 
vous,' replied the landlady, ' a halfpenny ! ' 
Pour vous? By heaven, she took him for a 
beggar! He paid his halfpenny, feeling that 
it were ungracious to correct her. But when 
he was forth again upon the road, he became 
vexed in spirit. The conscience is no gentle- 
man, he is a rabbinical fellow; and his con- 
science told him he had stolen the syrup. 

That night the travellers slept in Gien; the 
next day they passed the river and set forth 
(severally, as their custom was) on a short stage 
through the green plain upon the Berry side, to 
Chatillon-sur-Loire. It was the first day of the 
shooting; and the air rang with the report of 
firearms and the admiring cries of sportsmen. 
Overhead the birds were in consternation, 
wheeling in clouds, settling and re-arising. And 
yet with all this bustle on either hand, the road 
itself lay solitary. The Arethusa smoked a 
pipe beside a milestone, and I remember he 
laid down very exactly all he was to do at 



150 Epilogue to ''An Inland Voyage'' 

Chatillon : how he was to enjoy a cold plunge, 
to change his shirt, and to await the Cigarette's 
arrival, in sublime inaction, by the margin of 
the Loire. Fired by these ideas, he pushed 
the more rapidly forward, and came, early in 
the afternoon and in a breathing heat, to the 
entering-in of that ill-fated town. Childe 
Roland to the dark tower came. 

A polite gendarme threw his shadow on the 
path. 

* Monsieur est voyageur f ' he asked. 

And the Arethusa, strong in his innocence, 
forgetful of his vile attire, replied — I had almost 
said with gaiety : * So it would appear.' 

' His papers are in order ? ' said the gen- 
darme. And when the Arethusa, with a slight 
change of voice, admitted he had none, he was 
informed (politely enough) that he must appear 
before the Commissary. 

The Commissary sat at a table in his bed- 
room, stripped to the shirt and trousers, but 
still copiously perspiring ; and when he turned 
upon the prisoner a large meaningless counte- 
nance, that was (like Bardolph's) ' all whelks and 
bubuckles,' the dullest might have been pre- 



Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage 151 

pared for grief. Here was a stupid man, 
sleepy with the heat and fretful at the inter- 
ruption, whom neither appeal nor argument 
could reach. 

The Commissary. You have no papers ? 

The Arethusa. Not here. 

The Commissary. Why? 

The Arethusa. I have left them behind in 
my valise. 

The Commissary. You know, however, that 
it is forbidden to circulate without papers ? 

The Arethusa. Pardon me : I am convinced 
of the contrary. I am here on my rights as an 
English subject by international treaty. 

The Commissary {with scorn). You call your- 
self an Englishman ? 

The Arethusa. I do. 

The Commissary. Humph. — What is your 
trade ? 

The Arethusa. I am a Scotch Advocate. 

The Commissary (with singular annoyance). 
A Scotch advocate! Do you then pretend to 
support yourself by that in this department ? 

The Arethusa modestly disclaimed the pre- 
tension. The Commissary had scored a point. 



152 Epilogue to ''An Inland Voyage'* 

The Commissary. Why, then, do you 
travel ? 

The Arethusa. I travel for pleasure. 

The Commissary (pointing to the knap- 
sack, and with sublime incredulity). Avec ca f 
Voyez-vous,je suis un homme intelligent! (With 
that? Look here, I am a person of intelli- 
gence ! ) 

The culprit remaining silent under this home 
thrust, the Commissary relished his triumph for 
a while, and then demanded (like the postman, 
but with what different expectations !) to see 
the contents of the knapsack. And here the 
Arethusa, not yet sufficiently awake to his 
position, fell into a grave mistake. There was 
little or no furniture in the room except the 
Commissary's chair and table ; and to facilitate 
matters, the Arethusa (with all the innocence 
on earth) leant the knapsack on a corner of the 
bed. The Commissary fairly bounded from his 
seat ; his face and neck flushed past purple, 
almost into blue; and he screamed to lay the 
desecrating object on the floor. 

The knapsack proved to contain a change of 
shirts, of shoes, of socks, and of linen trousers, 



Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage' 153 

a small dressing-case, a piece of soap in one of 
the shoes, two volumes of the Collection Jannet 
lettered Poesies de Charles d Or Mans, a map, and 
a version book containing divers notes in prose 
and the remarkable English roundels of the 
voyager, still to this day unpublished : the 
Commissary of Chatillon is the only living man 
who has clapped an eye on these artistic trifles. 
He turned the assortment over with a contume- 
lious finger; it was plain from his daintiness 
that he regarded the Arethusa and all his 
belongings as the very temple of infection. 
Still there was nothing suspicious about the 
map, nothing really criminal except the roun- 
dels; as for Charles of Orleans, to the igno- 
rant mind of the prisoner, he seemed as good as 
a certificate ; and it was supposed the farce was 
nearly over. 

The inquisitor resumed his seat. 

The Commissary {after a pause). Eh Men, 

je vats vous dire ce que vous etes. Vous etes 

allemand et vous venez chanter a lafoire. (Well, 

then, I will tell you what you are. You are a 

German and have come to sing at the fair.) 

The Arethusa. Would you like to hear 



154 Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage'' 

me sing? I believe I could convince you of 
the contrary. 

The Commissary. Pas de plaisanterie, mon- 
sieur! 

The Arethusa. Well, sir, oblige me at 
least by looking at this book. Here, I open it 
with my eyes shut. Read one of these songs 
— read this one — and tell me, you who are a 
man of intelligence, if it would be possible to 
sing it at a fair ? 

The Commissary (critically). Mais oni. Tres 
bien. 

The Arethusa. Comment, monsieur! What ! 
But you do not observe it is antique. It is 
difficult to understand, even for you and me ; 
but for the audience at a fair, it would be mean- 
ingless. 

The Commissary (taking a pen). Enfin, il 
faut enfinir. What is your name ? 

The Arethusa (speaking with the swal- 
lowing vivacity of the English). Robert-Louis- 
Stev'ns'n. 

The Commissary (aghast). He' ! Qnoif 

The Arethusa (perceiving and improving 
his advantage). Rob'rt-Lou's-Stev'ns'n. 



Epilogue to ''An Inland Voyage** 155 

The Commissary {after several conflicts zvith 
his peii). Eh bien> il fant se passer dn nom. 
Qa ne s'ecrit pas. ( Well, we must do without 
the name : it is unspellable.) 

The above is a rough summary of this 
momentous conversation, in which I have been 
chiefly careful to preserve the plums of the 
Commissary ; but the remainder of the scene, 
perhaps because of his rising anger, has left but 
little definite in the memory of the Arethusa. 
The Commissary was not, I think, a practised 
literary man ; no sooner, at least, had he taken 
pen in hand and embarked on the composition 
of the proces-verbal y than he became distinctly 
more uncivil and began to show a predilection 
for that simplest of all forms of repartee : ' You 
lie ! ' Several times the Arethusa let it pass, 
and then suddenly flared up, refused to accept 
more insults or to answer further questions, 
defied the Commissary to do his worst, and 
promised him, if he did, that he should bitterly 
repent it. Perhaps if he had worn this proud 
front from the first, instead of beginning with a 
sense of entertainment and then going on to 
argue, the thing might have turned otherwise ; 



156 Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage* 

for even at this eleventh hour the Commissary 
was visibly staggered. But it was too late ; he 
had been challenged; the proch-verbal was 
begun ; and he again squared his elbows over 
his writing, and the Arethusa was led forth a 
prisoner. 

A step or two down the hot road stood the 
gendarmerie. Thither was our unfortunate 
conducted, and there he was bidden to empty 
forth the contents of his pockets. A handker- 
chief, a pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, 
matches, and some ten francs of change: that 
was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap 
of writing whether to identify or to condemn. 
The very gendarme was appalled before such 
destitution. 

* I regret,' he said, ' that I arrested you, for 
I see that you are no voyou' And he promised 
him every indulgence. 

The Arethusa, thus encouraged, asked for 
his pipe. That he was told was impossible, 
but if he chewed, he might have some tobacco. 
He did not chew, however, and asked instead 
to have his handkerchief. 

' Non,' said the gendarme. * Nous avons eu 



Epilogue to "An Inland Voyage' 157 

des histoires de gens qui se sont pendus* (No, 
we have had histories of people who hanged 
themselves.) 

'What,' cried the Arethusa. 'And is it for 
that you refuse me my handkerchief ? But see 
how much more easily I could hang myself in 
my trousers ! ' 

The man was struck by the novelty of the 
idea ; but he stuck to his colours, and only con- 
tinued to repeat vague offers of service. 

'At least,' said the Arethusa, 'be sure that 
you arrest my comrade ; he will follow me ere 
long on the same road, and you can tell him by 
the sack upon his shoulders.' 

This promised, the prisoner was led round 
into the back court of the building, a cellar 
door was opened, he was motioned down the 
stair, and bolts grated and chains clanged 
behind his descending person. 

The philosophic and still more the imagina- 
tive mind is apt to suppose itself prepared for 
any mortal accident. Prison, among other ills, 
was one that had been often faced by the un- 
daunted Arethusa. Even as he went down the 
stairs, he was telling himself that here was a 



158 Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage' 

famous occasion for a roundel, and that like the 
committed linnets of the tuneful cavalier, he too 
would make his prison musical. I will tell the 
truth at once : the roundel was never written, 
or it should be printed in this place, to raise a 
smile. Two reasons interfered : the first moral, 
the second physical. 

It is one of the curiosities of human nature, 
that although all men are liars, they can none 
of them bear to be told so of themselves. To 
get and take the lie with equanimity is a stretch 
beyond the stoic; and the Arethusa, who had 
been surfeited upon that insult, was blazing in- 
wardly with a white heat of smothered wrath. 
But the physical had also its part. The cellar 
in which he was confined was some feet under- 
ground, and it was only lighted by an unglazed, 
narrow aperture high up in the wall and 
smothered in the leaves of a green vine. The 
walls were of naked masonry, the floor of bare 
earth ; by way of furniture there was an 
earthenware basin, a water-jug, and a wooden 
bedstead with a blue-gray cloak for bedding. 
To be taken from the hot air of a summer's 
afternoon, the reverberation of the road and the 



Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage' 159 

stir of rapid exercise, and plunged into the 
gloom and damp of this receptacle for vaga- 
bonds, struck an instant chill upon the Arethusa's 
blood. Now see in how small a matter a hard- 
ship may consist : the floor was exceedingly- 
uneven underfoot, with the very spade-marks, I 
suppose, of the labourers who dug the founda- 
tions of the barrack; and what with the poor 
twilight and the irregular surface, walking was 
impossible. The caged author resisted for a 
good while; but the chill of the place struck 
deeper and deeper; and at length, with such 
reluctance as you may fancy, he was driven to 
climb upon the bed and wrap himself in the 
public covering. There, then, he lay upon the 
verge of shivering, plunged in semi-darkness, 
wound in a garment whose touch he dreaded 
like the plague, and (in a spirit far removed 
from resignation) telling the roll of the insults 
he had just received. These are not circum- 
stances favourable to the muse. 

Meantime (to look at the upper surface 
where the sun was still shining and the guns of 
sportsmen were still noisy through the tufted 
plain) the Cigarette was drawing near at his 



160 Epilogue to "An Inland Voyage'' 

more philosophic pace. In those days of liberty 
and health he was the constant partner of the 
Arethusa, and had ample opportunity to share 
in that gentleman's disfavour with the police. 
Many a bitter bowl had he partaken of with 
that disastrous comrade. He was himself a 
man born to float easily through life, his face 
and manner artfully recommending him to all. 
There was but one suspicious circumstance he 
could not carry off, and that was his companion. 
He will not readily forget the Commissary in 
what is ironically called the free town of 
Frankfort-on-the-Main ; nor the Franco-Belgian 
frontier ; nor the inn at La Fere ; last, but not 
least, he is pretty certain to remember Chatillon- 
sur-Loire. 

At the town entry, the gendarme culled him 
like a wayside flower ; and a moment later, two 
persons, in a high state of surprise, were con- 
fronted in the Commissary's office. For if the 
Cigarette was surprised to be arrested, the 
Commissary was no less taken aback by the 
appearance and appointments of his captive. 
Here was a man about whom there could be no 
mistake : a man of an unquestionable and un- 



Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage** 161 

assailable manner, in apple-pie order, dressed 
not with neatness merely but elegance, ready 
with his passport, at a word, and well supplied 
with money : a man the Commissary would 
have doffed his hat to on chance upon the 
highway; and this beau cavalier unblushingly 
claimed the Arethusa for his comrade! The 
conclusion of the interview was foregone ; of its 
humours, I remember only one. ' Baronet ? ' 
demanded the magistrate, glancing up from the 
passport. 'Alors, monsieur, vous etes le fils d'un 
baron ? ' And when the Cigarette (his one 
mistake throughout the interview) denied the 
soft impeachment, ( Alors, y from the Commissary, 
* ce riest pas voire passeport ! ' But these were 
ineffectual thunders ; he never dreamed of lay- 
ing hands upon the Cigarette ; presently he fell 
into a mood of unrestrained admiration, gloating 
over the contents of the knapsack, commending 
our friend's tailor. Ah, what an honoured 
guest was the Commissary entertaining ! what 
suitable clothes he wore for the warm weather ! 
what beautiful maps, what an attractive work of 
history he carried in his knapsack ! You are to 
understand there was now but one point of 



1 62 Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage* 

difference between them : what was to be done 
with the Arethusa ? the Cigarette demanding 
his release, the Commissary still claiming him 
as the dungeon's own. Now it chanced that 
the Cigarette had passed some years of his life 
in Egypt, where he had made acquaintance 
with two very bad things, cholera morbus and 
pashas; and in the eye of the Commissary, as 
he fingered the volume of Michelet, it seemed 
to our traveller there was something Turkish. 
I pass over this lightly ; it is highly possible 
there was some misunderstanding, highly pos- 
sible that the Commissary (charmed with his 
visitor) supposed the attraction to be mutual 
and took for an act of growing friendship 
what the Cigarette himself regarded as a bribe. 
And at any rate, was there ever a bribe more 
singular than an odd volume of Michelet's 
history ? The work was promised him for the 
morrow, before our departure; and presently 
after, either because he had his price, or to 
show that he was not the man to be behind in 
friendly offices — l Eh bien,' he said, % je suppose 
quHlfaut lacker votre camarade? And he tore 
up that feast of humour, the unfinished proch- 



Epilogue to k An Inland Voyage'' 163 

verbal. Ah, if he had only torn up instead the 
Arethusa's roundels ! There were many works 
burnt at Alexandria, there are many treasured 
in the British Museum, that I could better spare 
than the proch-verbal of Chatillon. Poor bu- 
buckled Commissary ! I begin to be sorry that 
he never had his Michelet : perceiving in him 
fine human traits, a broad-based stupidity, a 
gusto in his magisterial functions, a taste for 
letters, a ready admiration for the admirable. 
And if he did not admire the Arethusa, he was 
not alone in that. 

To the imprisoned one, shivering under the 
public covering, there came suddenly a noise of 
bolts and chains. He sprang to his feet, ready 
to welcome a companion in calamity; and 
instead of that, the door was flung wide, the 
friendly gendarme appeared above in the strong 
daylight, and with a magnificent gesture (being 
probably a student of the drama) — ' Vons etes 
libre /' he said. None too soon for the Are- 
thusa. I doubt if he had been half an hour 
imprisoned ; but by the watch in a man's brain 
(which was the only watch he carried) he should 
have been eight times longer; and he passed 



164 Epilogue to K An Inland Voyage'' 

forth with ecstasy up the cellar stairs into the 
healing warmth of the afternoon sun ; and the 
breath of the earth came as sweet as a cow's 
into his nostril ; and he heard again (and could 
have laughed for pleasure) the concord of 
delicate noises that we call the hum of life. 

And here it might be thought that my his- 
tory ended ; but not so, this was an act-drop 
and not the curtain. Upon what followed in 
front of the barrack, since there was a lady in 
the case, I scruple to expatiate. The wife of 
the Mar6chal-des-logis was a handsome woman, 
and yet the Arethusa was not sorry to be gone 
from her society. Something of her image, 
cool as a peach on that hot afternoon, still 
lingers in his memory : yet more of her con- 
versation. 'You have there a very fine 
parlour,' said the poor gentleman. — ■ Ah,' 
said Madame la Marechale (des-logis), 'you 
are very well acquainted with such parlours ! ' 
And you should have seen with what a hard 
and scornful eye she measured the vagabond 
before her ! I do not think he ever hated the 
Commissary ; but before that interview was at 
an end, he hated Madame la Marechale. His 



Epilogue to K An Inland Voyage' 165 

passion (as I am led to understand by one who 
was present) stood confessed in a burning 
eye, a pale cheek, and a trembling utterance ; 
Madame meanwhile tasting the joys of the 
matador, goading him with barbed words and 
staring him coldly down. 

It was certainly good to be away from this 
lady, and better still to sit down to an excellent 
dinner in the inn. Here, too, the despised trav- 
ellers scraped acquaintance with their next 
neighbour, a gentleman of these parts, returned 
from the day's sport, who had the good taste to 
find pleasure in their society. The dinner at an 
end, the gentleman proposed the acquaintance 
should be ripened in the cafe. 

The cafe was crowded with sportsmen con- 
clamantly explaining to each other and the 
world the smallness of their bags. About the 
centre of the room, the Cigarette and the 
Arethusa sat with their new acquaintance ; a 
trio very well pleased, for the travellers (after 
their late experience) were greedy of con- 
sideration, and their sportsman rejoiced in a 
pair of patient listeners. Suddenly the glass 
door flew open with a crash; the Marechal- 



1 66 Epilogue to k An Inland Voyage* 

des-logis appeared in the interval, gorgeously 
belted and befrogged, entered without saluta- 
tion, strode up the room with a clang of spurs 
and weapons, and disappeared through a door 
at the far end. Close at his heels followed 
the Arethusa's gendarme of the afternoon, 
imitating, with a nice shade of difference, the 
imperial bearing of his chief; only, as he 
passed, he struck lightly with his open hand 
on the shoulder of his late captive, and with 
that ringing, dramatic utterance of which he 
had the secret — ' Suivez ! ' said he. 

The arrest of the members, the oath of the 
Tennis Court, the signing of the declaration of 
independence, Mark Antony's oration, all the 
brave scenes of history, I conceive as having 
been not unlike that evening in the cafe at 
Chatillon. Terror breathed upon the assembly. 
A moment later, when the Arethusa had fol- 
lowed his recaptors into the farther part of the 
house, the Cigarette found himself alone with 
his coffee in a ring of empty chairs and tables, 
all the lusty sportsmen huddled into corners, all 
their clamorous voices hushed in whispering, all 
their eyes shooting at him furtively as at a leper. 



Epilogue to 'An Inland Voyage' 167 

And the Arethusa ? Well, he had a long-, 
sometimes a trying, interview in the back 
kitchen. The Marechal-des-logis, who was a 
very handsome man, and I believe both in- 
telligent and honest, had no clear opinion on 
the case. He thought the Commissary had 
done wrong, but he did not wish to get his 
subordinates into trouble; and he proposed 
this, that, and the other, to all of which the 
Arethusa (with a growing sense of his position) 
demurred. 

'In short,' suggested the Arethusa, 'you 
want to wash your hands of further responsi- 
bility ? Well, then, let me go to Paris.' 

The Marechal-des-logis looked at his watch. 

1 You may leave,' said he, ' by the ten o'clock 
train for Paris.' 

And at noon the next day the travellers 
were telling their misadventure in the dining- 
room at Siron's. 



RANDOM MEMORIES 

I. — THE COAST OF FIFE 

Many writers have vigorously described the 

pains of the first day or the first night at 

school; to a boy of any enterprise, I believe, 

they are more often agreeably exciting. Misery 

— or at least misery unrelieved — is confined to 

another period, to the days of suspense and the 

* dreadful looking-for ' of departure ; when the 

old life is running to an end, and the new life, 

with its new interests, not yet begun ; and to 

the pain of an imminent parting, there is added 

the unrest of a state of conscious pre-existence. 

The area railings, the beloved shop-window, 

the smell of semi-suburban tanpits, the song of 

the church bells upon a Sunday, the thin, high 

voices of compatriot children in a playing-field 
1 68 



Random Memories 169 

— what a sudden, what an overpowering pathos 
breathes to him from each familiar circum- 
stance ! The assaults of sorrow come not 
from within, as it seems to him, but from 
without. I was proud and glad to go to 
school; had I been let alone, I could have 
borne up like any hero ; but there was around 
me, in all my native town, a conspiracy of 
lamentation: 'Poor little boy, he is going 
away — unkind little boy, he is going to leave 
us ' ; so the unspoken burthen followed me as 
I went, with yearning and reproach. And at 
length, one melancholy afternoon in the early 
autumn, and at a place where it seems to me, 
looking back, it must be always autumn and 
generally Sunday, there came suddenly upon 
the face of all I saw — the long empty road, 
the lines of the tall houses, the church upon 
the hill, the woody hillside garden — a look of 
such a piercing sadness that my heart died; 
and seating myself on a door-step, I shed tears 
of miserable sympathy. A benevolent cat 
cumbered me the while with consolations — 
we two were alone in all that was visible of 
the London Road: two poor waifs who had 



170 Random Memories 

each tasted sorrow — and she fawned upon 
the weeper, and gambolled for his entertain- 
ment, watching the effect, it seemed, with 
motherly eyes. 

For the sake of the cat, God bless her! I 
confessed at home the story of my weakness ; 
and so it comes about that I owed a certain 
journey, and the reader owes the present paper, 
to a cat in the London Road. It was judged, 
if I had thus brimmed over on the public high- 
way, some change of scene was (in the medical 
sense) indicated; my father at the time was 
visiting the harbour lights of Scotland ; and it 
was decided he should take me along with him 
around a portion of the shores of Fife ; my first 
professional tour, my first journey in the com- 
plete character of man, without the help of 
petticoats. 

The Kingdom of Fife (that royal province) 
may be observed by the curious on the map, 
occupying a tongue of land between the firths 
of Forth and Tay. It may be continually seen 
from many parts of Edinburgh (among the rest, 
from the windows of my father's house) dying 
away into the distance and the easterly haar 



Random Memories 171 

with one smoky seaside town beyond another, 
or in winter printing on the gray heaven some 
glittering hill-tops. It has no beauty to recom- 
mend it, being a low, sea-salted, wind-vexed 
promontory ; trees very rare, except (as common 
on the east coast) along the dens of rivers ; the 
fields well cultivated, I understand, but not 
lovely to the eye. It is of the coast I speak: 
the interior may be the garden of Eden. History 
broods over that part of the world like the 
easterly haar. Even on the map, its long 
row of Gaelic place-names bear testimony to 
an old and settled race. Of these little towns, 
posted along the shore as close as sedges, each 
with its bit of harbour, its old weather-beaten 
church or public building, its flavour of decayed 
prosperity and decaying fish, not one but has 
its legend, quaint or tragic : Dunfermline, in 
whose royal towers the king may be still 
observed (in the ballad) drinking the blood-red 
wine; somnolent Inverkeithing, once the quar- 
antine of Leith ; Aberdour, hard by the monastic 
islet of Inchcolm, hard by Donibristle where the 
■ bonny face was spoiled ' ; Burntisland where, 
when Paul Jones was off the coast, the Reverend 



172 Random Memories 

Mr. Shirra had a table carried between tide- 
marks, and publicly prayed against the rover at 
the pitch of his voice and his broad lowland 
dialect ; Kinghorn, where Alexander ' brak's 
neckbane' and left Scotland to the English 
wars; Kirkcaldy, where the witches once pre- 
vailed extremely and sank tall ships and honest 
mariners in the North Sea; Dysart, famous — 
well famous at least to me for the Dutch ships 
that lay in its harbour, painted like toys and 
with pots of flowers and cages of song-birds in 
the cabin windows, and for one particular Dutch 
skipper who would sit all day in slippers on the 
break of the poop, smoking a long German 
pipe ; Wemyss (pronounce Weems) with its 
bat-haunted caves, where the Chevalier John- 
stone, on his flight from Culloden, passed a 
night of superstitious terrors; Leven, a bald, 
quite modern place, sacred to summer visitors, 
whence there has gone but yesterday the tall 
figure and the white locks of the last English- 
man in Delhi, my uncle Dr. Balfour, who was 
still walking his hospital rounds, while the 
troopers from Meerut clattered and cried ' Deen 
Deen ' along the streets of the imperial city, 



Random Memories 173 

and Willoughby mustered his handful of heroes 
at the magazine, and the nameless brave one in 
the telegraph office was perhaps already finger- 
ing his last despatch; and just a little beyond 
Leven, Largo Law and the smoke of Largo town 
mounting about its feet, the town of Alexander 
Selkirk, better known under the name of 
Robinson Crusoe. So on, the list might be 
pursued (only for private reasons, which the 
reader will shortly have an opportunity to 
guess) by St. Monance, and Pittenweem, and 
the two Anstruthers, and Cellardyke, and Crail, 
where Primate Sharpe was once a humble and 
innocent country minister : on to the heel of 
the land, to Fife Ness, overlooked by a sea- 
wood of matted elders and the quaint old 
mansion of Balcomie, itself overlooking but the 
breach or the quiescence of the deep — the Carr 
Rock beacon rising close in front, and as night 
draws in, the star of the Inchcape reef spring- 
ing up on the one hand, and the star of the 
May Island on the other, and farther off yet a 
third and a greater on the craggy foreland of 
St. Abb's. And but a little way round the 
corner of the land, imminent itself above the 



174 Random Memories 

sea, stands the gem of the province and the 
light of mediaeval Scotland, St. Andrews, where 
the great Cardinal Beaton held garrison against 
the world, and the second of the name and title 
perished (as you may read in Knox's jeering 
narrative) under the knives of true-blue Prot- 
estants, and to this day (after so many cen- 
turies) the current voice of the professor is 
not hushed. 

Here it was that my first tour of inspection 
began, early on a bleak easterly morning. There 
was a crashing run of sea upon the shore, I 
recollect, and my father and the man of the 
harbour light must sometimes raise their voices 
to be audible. Perhaps it is from this circum- 
stance, that I always imagine St. Andrews to 
be an ineffectual seat of learning, and the sound 
of the east wind and the bursting surf to linger 
in its drowsy class-rooms and confound the 
utterance of the professor, until teacher and 
taught are alike drowned in oblivion, and only 
the sea-gull beats on the windows and the 
draught of the sea-air rustles in the pages of 
the open lecture. But upon all this, and the 
romance of St. Andrews in general, the reader 



Random Memories 175 

must consult the works of Mr. Andrew Lang; 
who has written of it but the other day in his 
dainty prose and with his incommunicable 
humour, and long ago in one of his best poems, 
with grace, and local truth and a note of un- 
affected pathos. Mr. Lang knows all about 
the romance, I say, and the educational advan- 
tages, but I doubt if he had turned his attention 
to the harbour lights ; and it may be news even 
to him, that in the year 1863 their case was 
pitiable. Hanging about with the east wind 
humming in my teeth, and my hands (I make 
no doubt) in my pockets, I looked for the first 
time upon that tragi-comedy of the visiting 
engineer which I have seen so often re-enacted 
on a more important stage. Eighty years ago, 
I find my grandfather writing : ' It is the most 
painful thing that can occur to me to have a 
correspondence of this kind with any of the 
keepers, and when I come to the Light House, 
instead of having the satisfaction to meet them 
with approbation and welcome their Family, it 
is distressing when one is obliged to put on a 
most angry countenance and demeanour.' This 
painful obligation has been hereditary in my 



176 Random Memories 

race. I have myself, on a perfectly amateur 
and unauthorised inspection of Turnberry Point, 
bent my brows upon the keeper on the question 
of storm-panes ; and felt a keen pang of self- 
reproach, when we went down stairs again and 
I found he was making a coffin for his infant 
child ; and then regained my equanimity with 
the thought that I had done the man a service, 
and when the proper inspector came, he would 
be readier with his panes. The human race is 
perhaps credited with more duplicity than it 
deserves. The visitation of a lighthouse at 
least is a business of the most transparent 
nature. As soon as the boat grates on the 
shore, and the keepers step forward in their 
uniformed coats, the very slouch of the fellows' 
shoulders tells their story, and the engineer may 
begin at once to assume his * angry counte- 
nance.' Certainly the brass of the handrail will 
be clouded ; and if the brass be not immaculate, 
certainly all will be to match — the reflectors 
scratched, the spare lamp unready, the storm- 
panes in the storehouse. If a light is not 
rather more than middling good, it will be 
radically bad. Mediocrity (except in literature) 



Random Memories 177 

appears to be unattainable by man. But of 
course the unfortunate of St. Andrews was 
only an amateur, he was not in the Service, he 
had no uniform coat, he was (I believe) a 
plumber by his trade and stood (in the medi- 
aeval phrase) quite out of the danger of my 
father ; but he had a painful interview for all 
that, and perspired extremely. 

From St. Andrews, we drove over Magus 
Muir. My father had announced we were ' to 
post,' and the phrase called up in my hopeful 
mind visions of top-boots and the pictures in 
Rowlandson's Da?ice of Death ; but it was only 
a jingling cab that came to the inn door, such 
as I had driven in a thousand times at the low 
price of one shilling on the streets of Edin- 
burgh. Beyond this disappointment, I remem- 
ber nothing of that drive. It is a road I have 
often travelled, and of not one of these journeys 
do I remember any single trait. The fact has 
not been suffered to encroach on the truth of 
the imagination. I still see Magus Muir two 
hundred years ago ; a desert place, quite un- 
inclosed; in the midst, the primate's carriage 
fleeing at the gallop ; the assassins loose -reined 



178 Random Memories 

in pursuit, Burley Balfour, pistol in hand, 
among the first. No scene of history has ever 
written itself so deeply on my mind; not be- 
cause Balfour, that questionable zealot, was an 
ancestral cousin of my own ; not because of 
the pleadings of the victim and his daughter ; 
not even because of the live bum-bee that 
flew out of Sharpe's 'bacco-box, thus clearly 
indicating his complicity with Satan ; nor 
merely because, as it was after all a crime of 
a fine religious flavour, it figured in Sunday 
books and afforded a grateful relief from 
Ministering Children or the Memoirs of Mrs. 
Katharine Wins/owe. The figure that always 
fixed my attention is that of Hackston of 
Rathillet, sitting in the saddle with his cloak 
about his mouth, and through all that long, 
bungling, vociferous hurly-burly, revolving pri- 
vately a case of conscience. He would take 
no hand in the deed, because he had a private 
spite against the victim, and ' that action ' must 
be sullied with no suggestion of a worldly 
motive; on the other hand, ■ that action,' in 
itself was highly justified, he had cast in his 
lot with 'the actors,' and he must stay there, 



Random Memories 179 

inactive but publicly sharing the responsibility. 
1 You are a gentleman — you will protect me ! ' 
cried the wounded old man, crawling towards 
him. * I will never lay a hand on you,' said 
Hackston, and put his cloak about his mouth. 
It is an old temptation with me, to pluck away 
that cloak and see the face — to open that 
bosom and to read the heart. With incomplete 
romances about Hackston, the drawers of my 
youth were lumbered. I read him up in every 
printed book that I could lay my hands on. 
I even dug among the Wodrow manuscripts, 
sitting shame-faced in the very room where my 
hero had been tortured two centuries before, 
and keenly conscious of my youth in the midst 
of other and (as I fondly thought) more gifted 
students. All was vain : that he had passed a 
riotous nonage, that he was a zealot, that he 
twice displayed (compared with his grotesque 
companions) some tincture of soldierly resolu- 
tion and even of military common sense, and 
that he figured memorably in the scene on 
Magus Muir, so much and no more could 
I make out. But whenever I cast my eyes 
backward, it is to see him like a landmark on 



i8o Random Memories 

the plains of history, sitting with his cloak 
about his mouth, inscrutable. How small a 
thing creates an immortality ! I do not think 
he can have been a man entirely common- 
place ; but had he not thrown his cloak about 
his mouth, or had the witnesses forgot to 
chronicle the action, he would not thus have 
haunted the imagination of my boyhood, and 
to-day he would scarce delay me for a para- 
graph. An incident, at once romantic and 
dramatic, which at once awakes the judgment 
and makes a picture for the eye, how little do 
we realise its perdurable power ! Perhaps no 
one does so but the author, just as none but he 
appreciates the influence of jingling words; so 
that he looks on upon life, with something of a 
covert smile, seeing people led by what they 
fancy to be thoughts and what are really the 
accustomed artifices of his own trade, or roused 
by what they take to be principles and are 
really picturesque effects. In a pleasant book 
about a school-class club, Colonel Fergusson 
has recently told a little anecdote. A ' Philo- 
sophical Society ' was formed by some 
Academy boys— among them, Colonel Fergus- 



Random Memories 181 

son himself, Fleeming Jenkin, and Andrew 
Wilson, the Christian Buddhist and author of 
The Abode of Snotv. Before these learned 
pundits, one member laid the following ingeni- 
ous problem : * What would be the result of 
putting a pound of potassium in a pot of 
porter ? ' 'I should think there would be 
a number of interesting bi-products,' said a 
smatterer at my elbow; but for me the tale 
itself has a bi-product, and stands as a type of 
much that is most human. For this inquirer 
who conceived himself to burn with a zeal 
entirely chemical, was really immersed in 
a design of a quite different nature; 
unconsciously to his own recently breeched 
intelligence, he was engaged in literature. 
Putting, pound, potassium, pot, porter; initial 
p, mediant t — that was his idea, poor little 
boy ! So with politics and that which excites 
men in the present, so with history and that 
which rouses them in the past : there lie at the 
root of what appears, most serious unsuspected 
elements. 

The triple town of Anstruther Wester, 
Anstruther Easter, and Cellardyke, all three 



1 82 Random Memories 

Royal Burghs — or two Royal Burghs and a less 
distinguished suburb, I forget which — lies con- 
tinuously along the seaside, and boasts of 
either two or three separate parish churches, 
and either two or three separate harbours. 
These ambiguities are painful; but the fact is 
(although it argue me uncultured), I am but 
poorly posted upon Cellardyke. My business 
lay in the two Anstruthers. A tricklet of a 
stream divides them, spanned by a bridge ; and 
over the bridge at the time of my knowledge, 
the celebrated Shell House stood outpost on 
the west. This had been the residence of an 
agreeable eccentric; during his fond tenancy, 
he had illustrated the outer walls, as high (if I 
remember rightly) as the roof, with elaborate 
patterns and pictures, and snatches of verse in 
the vein of exegi monumentum ; shells and 
pebbles, artfully contrasted and conjoined, had 
been his medium ; and I like to think of him 
standing back upon the bridge, when all was 
finished, drinking in the general effect and (like 
Gibbon) already lamenting his employment. 

The same bridge saw another sight in the 
seventeenth century. Mr. Thomson, the * curat ' 



Random Memories 183 

of Anstruther Easter, was a man highly ob- 
noxious to the devout : in the first place, 
because he was a * curat ' ; in the second 
place, because he was a person of irregular 
and scandalous life ; and in the third place, 
because he was generally suspected of deal- 
ings with the Enemy of Man. These three 
disqualifications, in the popular literature of 
the time, go hand in hand ; but the end of Mr. 
Thomson was a thing quite by itself, and in 
the proper phrase, a manifest judgment. He 
had been at a friend's house in Anstruther 
Wester, where (and elsewhere, I suspect,) he 
had partaken of the bottle ; indeed, to put the 
thing in our cold modern way, the reverend 
gentleman was on the brink of delirium 
tremens. It was a dark night, it seems; a 
little lassie came carrying a lantern to fetch 
the curate home; and away they went down 
the street of Anstruther Wester, the lantern 
swinging a bit in the child's hand, the barred 
lustre tossing up and down along the front of 
slumbering houses, and Mr. Thomson not alto- 
gether steady on his legs nor (to all appearance) 
easy in his mind. The pair had reached the 



184 Random Memories 

middle of the bridge when (as I conceive the 
scene) the poor tippler started in some baseless 
fear and looked behind him ; the child, already- 
shaken by the minister's strange behaviour, 
started also; in so doing, she would jerk the 
lantern; and for the space of a moment the 
lights and the shadows would be all con- 
founded. Then it was that to the unhinged 
toper and the twittering child, a huge bulk 
of blackness seemed to sweep down, to pass 
them close by as they stood upon the bridge, 
and to vanish on the farther side in the general 
darkness of the night. ' Plainly the devil come 
for Mr. Thomson ! ' thought the child. What 
Mr. Thomson thought himself, we have no 
ground of knowledge ; but he fell upon his 
knees in the midst of the bridge like a man 
praying. On the rest of the journey to the 
manse, history is silent ; but when they came 
to the door, the poor caitiff, taking the lantern 
from the child, looked upon her with so lost a 
countenance that her little courage died within 
her, and she fled home screaming to her parents. 
Not a soul would venture out; all that night, 
the minister dwelt alone with his terrors in the 



Random Memories 185 

manse ; and when the day dawned, and men 
made bold to go about the streets, they found 
the devil had come indeed for Mr. Thomson. 

This manse of Anstruther Easter has another 
and a more cheerful association. It was early 
in the morning, about a century before the days 
of Mr. Thomson, that his predecessor was called 
out of bed to welcome a Grandee of Spain, the 
Duke of Medina Sidonia, just landed in the 
harbour underneath. But sure there was never 
seen a more decayed grandee ; sure there was 
never a duke welcomed from a stranger place 
of exile. Half-way between Orkney and Shet- 
land, there lies a certain isle ; on the one hand 
the Atlantic, on the other the North Sea, 
bombard its pillared cliffs ; sore-eyed, short- 
living, inbred fishers and their families herd 
in its few huts; in the graveyard pieces of 
wreck-wood stand for monuments; there is 
nowhere a more inhospitable spot. Belle-Isle- 
en-Mer — Fair-Isle-at-Sea — that is a name that 
has always rung in my mind's ear like music ; 
but the only ' Fair Isle ' on which I ever set 
my foot, was this unhomely, rugged turret-top 
of submarine sierras. Here, when his ship 



1 86 Random Memories 

was broken, my lord Duke joyfully got ashore ; 
here for long months he and certain of his 
men were harboured; and it was from this 
durance that he landed at last to be welcomed 
(as well as such a papist deserved, no doubt) 
by the godly incumbent of Anstruther Easter ; 
and after the Fair Isle, what a fine city must 
that have appeared ! and after the island diet, 
what a hospitable spot the minister's table ! 
And yet he must have lived on friendly terms 
with his outlandish hosts. For to this day 
there still survives a relic of the long winter 
evenings when the sailors of the great Armada 
crouched about the hearths of the Fair-Islanders, 
the planks of their own lost galleon perhaps 
lighting up the scene, and the gale and the 
surf that beat about the coast contributing 
their melancholy voices. All the folk of the 
north isles are great artificers of knitting : the 
Fair-Islanders alone dye their fabrics in the 
Spanish manner. To this day, gloves and 
nightcaps, innocently decorated, may be seen 
for sale in the Shetland warehouse at Edin- 
burgh, or on the Fair Isle itself in the catechist's 



Random Memories 187 

house ; and to this day, they tell the story of 
the Duke of Medina Sidonia's adventure. 

It would seem as if the Fair Isle had some 
attraction for 'persons of quality.' When I 
landed there myself, an elderly gentleman, 
unshaved, poorly attired, his shoulders wrapped 
in a plaid, was seen walking to and fro, with a 
book in his hand, upon the beach. He paid 
no heed to our arrival, which we thought a 
strange thing in itself; but when one of the 
officers of the Pharos, passing narrowly by 
him, observed his book to be a Greek Testa- 
ment, our wonder and interest took a higher 
flight. The catechist was cross-examined; he 
said the gentleman had been put across some 
time before in Mr. Bruce of Sumburgh's schooner, 
the only link between the Fair Isle and the rest 
of the world ; and that he held services and was 
doing 'good.' So much came glibly enough; 
but when pressed a little farther, the catechist 
displayed embarrassment. A singular diffidence 
appeared upon his face : ' They tell me,' said he, 
in low tones, ' that he's a lord.' And a lord he 
was ; a peer of the realm pacing that inhospi- 



1 88 Random Memories 

table beach with his Greek Testament, and his 
plaid about his shoulders, set upon doing good, 
as he understood it, worthy man ! And his 
grandson, a good-looking little boy, much 
better dressed than the lordly evangelist, and 
speaking with a silken English accent very 
foreign to the scene, accompanied me for a 
while in my exploration of the island. I sup- 
pose this little fellow is now my lord, and 
wonder how much he remembers of the Fair 
Isle. Perhaps not much ; for he seemed to 
accept very quietly his savage situation; and 
under such guidance, it is like that this was 
not his first nor yet his last adventure. 



VI 

RANDOM MEMORIES 

II. THE EDUCATION OF AN ENGINEER 

Anstruther is a place sacred to the Muse : 
she inspired (really to a considerable extent) 
Tennant's vernacular poem Anst'er Fair ; and 
I have there waited upon her myself with much 
devotion. This was when I came as a young 
man to glean engineering experience from the 
building of the breakwater. What I gleaned, I 
am sure I do not know; but indeed I had 
already my own private determination to be an 
author; I loved the art of words and the 
appearances of life ; and travellers, and headers, 
and rubble, and polished ashlar, and pierres per- 
dues, and even the thrilling question of the 
string-course, interested me only (if they inter- 
ested me at all) as properties for some possible 

189 



190 Random Memories 

romance or as words to add to my vocabulary. 
To grow a little catholic is the compensation of 
years; youth is one-eyed; and in those days, 
though I haunted the breakwater by day, and 
even loved the place for the sake of the sun- 
shine, the thrilling seaside air, the wash of 
waves on the sea-face, the green glimmer of the 
divers' helmets far below, and the musical 
chinking of the masons, my one genuine pre- 
occupation lay elsewhere, and my only industry 
was in the hours when I was not on duty. I 
lodged with a certain Bailie Brown, a carpenter 
by trade; and there, as soon as dinner was 
despatched, in a chamber scented with dry rose- 
leaves, drew in my chair to the table and 
proceeded to pour forth literature, at such a 
speed, and with such intimations of early death 
and immortality, as I now look back upon with 
wonder. Then it was that I wrote Voces Fide- 
liimiy a series of dramatic monologues in verse ; 
then that I indited the bulk of a covenanting 
novel — like so many others, never finished. 
Late I sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) 
under the very dart of death, toiling to leave a 
memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust 



Random Memories 191 

aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor 
feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap 
Voces Fidelium on the fire before he goes ; so 
clear does he appear before me, sitting there 
between his candles in the rose-scented room 
and the late night ; so ridiculous a picture (to 
my elderly wisdom) does the fool present ! But 
he was driven to his bed at last without 
miraculous intervention ; and the manner of his 
driving sets the last touch upon this eminently 
youthful business. The weather was then so 
warm that I must keep the windows open ; the 
night without was populous with moths. As 
the late darkness deepened, my literary tapers 
beaconed forth more brightly; thicker and 
thicker came the dusty night-fliers, to gyrate 
for one brilliant instant round the flame and 
fall in agonies upon my paper. Flesh and blood 
could not endure the spectacle ; to capture im- 
mortality was doubtless a noble enterprise, but 
not to capture it at such a cost of suffering ; and 
out would go the candles, and off would I go 
to bed in the darkness, raging to think that 
the blow might fall on the morrow, and there 
was Voces Fidelium still incomplete. Well, the 



192 Random Memories 

moths are all gone, and Voces Fidelium along 
with them ; only the fool is still on hand and 
practises new follies. 

Only one thing in connection with the har- 
bour tempted me, and that was the diving, an 
experience I burned to taste of. But this was 
not to be, at least in Anstruther ; and the sub- 
ject involves a change of scene to the sub-arctic 
town of Wick. You can never have dwelt in 
a country more unsightly than that part of 
Caithness, the land faintly swelling, faintly 
falling, not a tree, not a hedgerow, the fields 
divided by single slate stones set upon their 
edge, the wind always singing in your ears and 
(down the long road that led nowhere) thrum- 
ming in the telegraph wires. Only as you 
approached the coast was there anything to stir 
the heart. The plateau broke down to the 
North Sea in formidable cliffs, the tall out-stacks 
rose like pillars ringed about with surf, the coves 
were over-brimmed with clamorous froth, the 
sea-birds screamed, the wind sang in the thyme 
on the cliff's edge ; here and there, small ancient 
castles toppled on the brim ; here and there, it 
was possible to dip into a dell of shelter, where 



Random Memories 193 

you might lie and tell yourself you were a little 
warm, and hear (near at hand) the whin-pods 
bursting in the afternoon sun, and (farther off) 
the rumour of the turbulent sea. As for Wick 
itself, it is one of the meanest of man's towns, 
and situate certainly on the baldest of God's 
bays. It lives for herring, and a strange sight 
it is to see (of an afternoon) the heights of 
Pulteney blackened by seaward-looking fishers, 
as when a city crowds to a review — or, as when 
bees have swarmed, the ground is horrible with 
lumps and clusters ; and a strange sight, and a 
beautiful, to see the fleet put silently out against 
a rising moon, the sea-line rough as a wood with 
sails, and ever and again and one after another, 
a boat flitting swiftly by the silver disk. This 
mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats, is out 
of all proportion to the town itself; and the 
oars are manned and the nets hauled by immi- 
grants from the Long Island (as we call the 
outer Hebrides), who come for that season only, 
and depart again, if ' the take ' be poor, leaving 
debts behind them. In a bad year, the end of 
the herring fishery is therefore an exciting 
time ; fights are common, riots often possible ; 



194 Random Memories 

an apple knocked from a child's hand was once 
the signal for something like a war ; and even 
when I was there, a gunboat lay in the bay to 
assist the authorities. To contrary interests, it 
should be observed, the curse of Babel is here 
added; the Lews men are Gaelic speakers. 
Caithness has adopted English ; an odd circum- 
stance, if you reflect that both must be largely 
Norsemen by descent. I remember seeing one 
of the strongest instances of this division : a 
thing like a Punch-and-Judy box erected on 
the flat grave-stones of the churchyard; from 
the hutch or proscenium — I know not what to 
call it — an eldritch-looking preacher laying down 
the law in Gaelic about some one of the name 
of Powly whom I at last divined to be the apostle 
to the Gentiles; a large congregation of the 
Lews men very devoutly listening ; and on the 
outskirts of the crowd, some of the town's 
children (to whom the whole affair was Greek 
and Hebrew) profanely playing tigg. The 
same descent, the same country, the same nar- 
row sect of the same religion, and all these 
bonds made very largely nugatory by an acci- 
dental difference of dialect ! 



Random Memories 195 

Into the bay of Wick stretched the dark 
length of the unfinished breakwater, in its cage 
of open staging; the travellers (like frames of 
churches) over-plumbing all ; and away at the 
extreme end, the divers toiling unseen on the 
foundation. On a platform of loose planks, 
the assistants turned their air-mills ; a stone 
might be swinging between wind and water; 
underneath the swell ran gaily ; and from time 
to time, a mailed dragon with a window-glass 
snout came dripping up the ladder. Youth is 
a blessed season after all; my stay at Wick 
was in the year of Voces Fidelium and the 
rose-leaf room at Bailie Brown's; and already 
I did not care two straws for literary glory. 
Posthumous ambition perhaps requires an atmos- 
phere of roses; and the more rugged excitant 
of Wick east winds had made another boy of 
me. To go down in the diving-dress, that was 
my absorbing fancy ; and with the countenance 
of a certain handsome scamp of a diver, Bob 
Bain by name, I gratified the whim. 

It was gray, harsh, easterly weather, the 
swell ran pretty high, and out in the open 
there were ■ skipper's daughters,' when I found 



196 Random Memories 

myself at last on the diver's platform, twenty 
pounds of lead upon each foot and my whole 
person swollen with ply and ply of woollen 
underclothing. One moment, the salt wind 
was whistling round my night-capped head ; 
the next, I was crushed almost double under 
the weight of the helmet. As that intolerable 
burthen was laid upon me, I could have found 
it in my heart (only for shame's sake) to cry 
off from the whole enterprise. But it was too 
late. The attendants began to turn the hurdy- 
gurdy, and the air to whistle through the tube ; 
some one screwed in the barred window of the 
vizor; and I was cut off in a moment from my 
fellow-men; standing there in their midst, but 
quite divorced from intercourse : a creature 
deaf and dumb, pathetically looking forth upon 
them from a climate of his own. Except that 
I could move and feel, I was like a man fallen 
in a catalepsy. But time was scarce given me 
to realise my isolation ; the weights were hung 
upon my back and breast, the signal rope was 
thrust into my unresisting hand ; and setting a 
twenty-pound foot upon the ladder, I began 
ponderously to descend. 



Random Memories 197 

Some twenty rounds below the platform, 
twilight fell. Looking up, I saw a low green 
heaven mottled with vanishing bells of white ; 
looking around, except for the weedy spokes 
and shafts of the ladder, nothing but a green 
gloaming, somewhat opaque but very restful 
and delicious. Thirty rounds lower, I stepped 
off on the fiierres perdues of the foundation ; 
a dumb helmeted figure took me by the hand, 
and made a gesture (as I read it) of encourage- 
ment ; and looking in at the creature's window, 
I beheld the face of Bain. There we were, hand 
to hand and (when it pleased us) eye to eye ; 
and either might have burst himself with 
shouting, and not a whisper come to his com- 
panion's hearing. Each, in his own little 
world of air, stood incommunicably separate. 

Bob had told me ere this a little tale, a five 
minutes' drama at the bottom of the sea, 
which at that moment possibly shot across my 
mind. He was down with another, settling a 
stone of the sea-wall. They had it well ad- 
justed, Bob gave the signal, the scissors were 
slipped, the. stone set home ; and it was time 
to turn to something else. But still his com- 



198 Random Memories 

panion remained bowed over the block like a 
mourner on a tomb, or only raised himself to 
make absurd contortions and mysterious signs 
unknown to the vocabulary of the diver. 
There, then, these two stood for awhile, like 
the dead and the living; till there flashed a 
fortunate thought into Bob's mind, and he 
stooped, peered through the window of that 
other world, and beheld the face of its inhabit- 
ant wet with streaming tears. Ah! the man 
was in pain! And Bob, glancing downward, 
saw what was the trouble : the block had been 
lowered on the foot of that unfortunate — he 
was caught alive at the bottom of the sea 
under fifteen tons of rock. 

That two men should handle a stone so 
heavy, even swinging in the scissors, may 
appear strange to the inexpert. These must 
bear in mind the great density of the water of 
the sea, and the surprising results of transplan- 
tation to that medium. To understand a little 
what these are, and how a man's weight, so far 
from being an encumbrance, is the very ground 
of his agility, was the chief lesson of my sub- 
marine experience. The knowledge came upon 



Random Memories 199 

me by degrees. As I began to go forward 
with the hand of my estranged companion, a 
world of tumbled stones was visible, pillared 
with the weedy uprights of the staging: over- 
head, a flat roof of green : a little in front, the 
sea-wall, like an unfinished rampart. And pres- 
ently in our upward progress, Bob motioned me 
to leap upon a stone ; I looked to see if he were 
possibly in earnest, and he only signed to me 
the more imperiously. Now the block stood 
six feet high ; it would have been quite a leap 
to me unencumbered ; with the breast and 
back weights, and the twenty pounds upon 
each foot, and the staggering load of the hel- 
met, the thing was out of reason. I laughed 
aloud in my tomb; and to prove to Bob how 
far he was astray, I gave a little impulse from 
my toes. Up I soared like a bird, my compan- 
ion soaring at my side. As high as to the stone, 
and then higher, I pursued my impotent and 
empty flight. Even when the strong arm of 
Bob had checked my shoulders, my heels con- 
tinued their ascent; so that I blew out side- 
ways like an autumn leaf, and must be hauled 
in, hand over hand, as sailors haul in the slack 



200 Random Memories 

of a sail, and propped upon my feet again like 
an intoxicated sparrow. Yet a little higher on 
the foundation, and we began to be affected by 
the bottom of the swell, running there like a 
strong breeze of wind. Or so I must suppose ; 
for, safe in my cushion of air, I was conscious 
of no impact ; only swayed idly like a weed, and 
was now borne helplessly abroad, and now swiftly 
— and yet with dream-like gentleness — impelled 
against my guide. So does a child's balloon 
divagate upon the currents of the air, and touch 
and slide off again from every obstacle. So must 
have ineffectually swung, so resented their ineffi- 
ciency, those light crowds that followed the Star 
of Hades, and uttered exiguous voices in the land 
beyond Cocytus. 

There was something strangely exasperating, 
as well as strangely wearying, in these uncom- 
manded evolutions. It is bitter to return to 
infancy, to be supported, and directed, and 
perpetually set upon your feet, by the hand 
of someone else. The air besides, as it is 
supplied to you by the busy millers on the 
platform, closes the eustachian tubes and keeps 
the neophyte perpetually swallowing, till his 



Random Memories 201 

throat is grown so dry that he can swallow no 
longer. And for all these reasons — although I 
had a fine, dizzy, muddle-headed joy in my 
surroundings, and longed, and tried, and always 
failed, to lay hands on the fish that darted here 
and there about me, swift as humming-birds — 
yet I fancy I was rather relieved than otherwise 
when Bain brought me back to the ladder and 
signed to me to mount. And there was one 
more experience before me even then. Of a 
sudden, my ascending head passed into the 
trough of a swell. Out of the green, I shot at 
once into a glory of rosy, almost of sanguine 
light — the multitudinous seas incarnadined, the 
heaven above a vault of crimson. And then 
the glory faded into the hard, ugly daylight of 
a Caithness autumn, with a low sky, a gray sea, 
and a whistling wind. 

Bob Bain had five shillings for his trouble, 
and I had done what I desired. It was one of 
the best things I got from my education as an 
engineer : of which however, as a way of life, I 
wish to speak with sympathy. It takes a man 
into the open air ; it keeps him hanging about 
harbour-sides, which is the richest form of idling ; 



202 Random Memories 

it carries him to wild islands; it gives him a 
taste of the genial dangers of the sea; it 
supplies him with dexterities to exercise; it 
makes demands upon his ingenuity ; it will go 
far to cure him of any taste (if ever he had one) 
for the miserable life of cities. And when it 
has done so, it carries him back and shuts him 
in an office ! From the roaring skerry and the 
wet thwart of the tossing boat, he passes to the 
stool and desk; and with a memory full of 
ships, and seas, and perilous headlands, and the 
shining pharos, he must apply his long-sighted 
eyes to the petty niceties of drawing, or measure 
his inaccurate mind with several pages of con- 
secutive figures. He is a wise youth, to be 
sure, who can balance one part of genuine life 
against two parts of drudgery between four 
walls, and for the sake of the one, manfully 
accept the other. 

Wick was scarce an eligible place of stay. 
But how much better it was to hang in the cold 
wind upon the pier, to go down with Bob Bain 
among the roots of the staging, to be all day in 
a boat coiling a wet rope and shouting orders 
— not always very wise — than to be warm and 



Random Memories 203 

dry, and dull, and dead-alive, in the most 
comfortable office. And Wick itself had in 
those days a note of originality. It may have 
still, but I misdoubt it much. The old minister 
of Keiss would not preach, in these degenerate 
times, for an hour and a half upon the clock. 
The gipsies must be gone from their caverns ; 
where you might see, from the mouth, the 
women tending their fire, like Meg Merrilies, 
and the men sleeping off their coarse potations ; 
and where in winter gales, the surf would 
beleaguer them closely, bursting in their very 
door. A traveller to-day upon the Thurso 
coach would scarce observe a little cloud of 
smoke among the moorlands, and be told, 
quite openly, it marked a private still. He 
would not indeed make that journey, for there 
is now no Thurso coach. And even if he could, 
one little thing that happened to me could 
never happen to him, or not with the same 
trenchancy of contrast. 

We had been upon the road all evening; 
the coach-top was crowded with Lews fishers 
going home, scarce anything but Gaelic had 
sounded in my ears; and our way had lain 



204 Random Memories 

throughout over a moorish country very 
northern to behold. Latish at night, though 
it was still broad day in our subarctic latitude, 
we came down upon the shores of the roaring 
Pentland Firth, that grave of mariners ; on one 
hand, the cliffs of Dunnet Head ran seaward ; 
in front was the little bare, white town of 
Castleton, its streets full of blowing sand; 
nothing beyond, but the North Islands, the 
great deep, and the perennial ice-fields of the 
Pole. And here, in the last imaginable place, 
there sprang up young outlandish voices and a 
chatter of some foreign speech ; and I saw, 
pursuing the coach with its load of Hebridean 
fishers — as they had pursued vetturini up the 
passes of the Apennines or perhaps along 
the grotto under Virgil's tomb — two little 
dark-eyed, white-toothed Italian vagabonds, of 
twelve to fourteen years of age, one with a 
hurdy-gurdy, the other with a cage of white 
mice. The coach passed on, and their small 
Italian chatter died in the distance ; and I was 
left to marvel how they had wandered into that 
country, and how they fared in it, and what 
they thought of it, and when (if ever) they 



Random Memories 205 

should see again the silver wind-breaks run 
among the olives, and the stone-pine stand 
guard upon Etruscan sepulchres. 

Upon any American, the strangeness of this 
incident is somewhat lost. For as far back as 
he goes in his own land, he will find some alien 
camping there ; the Cornish miner, the French 
or Mexican half-blood, the negro in the South, 
these are deep in the woods and far among 
the mountains. But in an old, cold, and 
rugged country such as mine, the days of im- 
migration are long at an end; and away up 
there, which was at that time far beyond the 
northernmost extreme of railways, hard upon 
the shore of that ill-omened strait of whirl- 
pools, in a land of moors where no stranger 
came, unless it should be a sportsman to shoot 
grouse or an antiquary to decipher runes, the 
presence of these small pedestrians struck the 
mind as though a bird-of-paradise had risen 
from the heather or an albatross come fishing 
in the bay of Wick. They were as strange to 
their surroundings as my lordly evangelist or 
the old Spanish grandee on the Fair Isle. 



VII 
THE LANTERN-BEARERS 

I 

These boys congregated every autumn about a 

certain easterly fisher-village, where they tasted 

in a high degree the glory of existence. The 

place was created seemingly on purpose for the 

diversion of young gentlemen. A street or two 

of houses, mostly red and many of them tiled ; 

a number of fine trees clustered about the manse 

and the kirkyard, and turning the chief street 

into a shady alley; many little gardens more 

than usually bright with flowers ; nets a-drying, 

and fisher-wives scolding in the backward parts ; 

a smell of fish, a genial smell of seaweed; 

whiffs of blowing sand at the street-corners ; 

shops with golf-balls and bottled lollipops ; 

another shop with penny pickwicks (that re- 
206 



The Lantern-Bearers 207 

markable cigar) and the London Journal, dear 
to me for its startling pictures, and a few 
novels, dear for their suggestive names : such, 
as well as memory serves me, were the ingredi- 
ents of the town. These, you are to conceive 
posted on a spit between two sandy bays, and 
sparsely flanked with villas — enough for the 
boys to lodge in with their subsidiary parents, 
not enough (not yet enough) to cocknify the 
scene : a haven in the rocks in front : in front 
of that, a file of gray islets : to the left, endless 
links and sand wreaths, a wilderness of hiding- 
holes, alive with popping rabbits and soaring 
gulls : to the right, a range of seaward crags, 
one rugged brow beyond another ; the ruins of 
a mighty and ancient fortress on the brink of 
one ; coves between — now charmed into sun- 
shine quiet, now whistling with wind and 
clamorous with bursting surges; the dens and 
sheltered hollows redolent of thyme and south- 
ernwood, the air at the cliff's edge brisk and 
clean and pungent of the sea — in front of all, 
the Bass Rock, tilted seaward like a doubtful 
bather, the surf ringing it with white, the solan- 
geese hanging round its summit like a great 



208 The Lantern- Bearers 

and glittering smoke. This choice piece of 
seaboard was sacred, besides, to the wrecker; 
and the Bass, in the eye of fancy, still flew the 
colours of King James ; and in the ear of fancy 
the arches of Tantallon still rang with horse- 
shoe iron, and echoed to the commands of 
Bell-the-Cat. 

There was nothing to mar your days, if you 
were a boy summering in that part, but the 
embarrassment of pleasure. You might golf if 
you wanted; but I seem to have been better 
employed. You might secrete yourself in the 
Lady's Walk, a certain sunless dingle of elders, 
all mossed over by the damp as green as grass, 
and dotted here and there by the streamside 
with roofless walls, the cold homes of anchorites. 
To fit themselves for life, and with a special eye 
to acquire the art of smoking, it was even 
common for the boys to harbour there ; and 
you might have seen a single penny pickwick, 
honestly shared in lengths with a blunt knife, 
bestrew the glen with these apprentices. Again, 
you might join our fishing parties, where we sat 
perched as thick as solan-geese, a covey of 
little anglers, boy and girl, angling over each 



The Lantern- Bearers 209 

other's heads, to the much entanglement of 
lines and loss of podleys and consequent shrill 
recrimination — shrill as the geese themselves. 
Indeed, had that been all, you might have done 
this often ; but though fishing be a fine pas- 
time, the podley is scarce to be regarded as 
a dainty for the table; and it was a point of 
honour that a boy should eat all that he had 
taken. Or again, you might climb the Law, 
where the whale's jawbone stood landmark in 
the buzzing wind, and behold the face of many 
counties, and the smoke and spires of many 
towns, and the sails of distant ships. You 
might bathe, now in the flaws of fine weather, 
that we pathetically call our summer, now in a 
gale of wind, with the sand scourging your bare 
hide, your clothes thrashing abroad from under- 
neath their guardian stone, the froth of the 
great breakers casting you headlong ere it had 
drowned your knees. Or you might explore 
the tidal rocks, above all in the ebb of springs, 
when the very roots of the hills were for the 
nonce discovered ; following my leader from 
one group to another, groping in slippery tangle 
for the wreck of ships, wading in pools after the 



210 The Lantern- Bearers 

abominable creatures of the sea, and ever with 
an eye cast backward on the march of the tide 
and the menaced line of your retreat. And 
then you might go Crusoeing, a word that 
covers all extempore eating in the open air: 
digging perhaps a house under the margin of 
the links, kindling a fire of the sea-ware, and 
cooking apples there — if they were truly apples, 
for I sometimes suppose the merchant must 
have played us off with some inferior and quite 
local fruit, capable of resolving, in the neigh- 
bourhood of fire, into mere sand and smoke 
and iodine; or perhaps pushing to Tantallon, 
you might lunch on sandwiches and visions in 
the grassy court, while the wind hummed in the 
crumbling turrets ; or clambering along the 
coast, eat geans ' (the worst, I must suppose, in 
Christendom) from an adventurous gean tree 
that had taken root under a cliff, where it was 
shaken with an ague of east wind, and silvered 
after gales with salt, and grew so foreign among 
its bleak surroundings that to eat of its produce 
was an adventure in itself. 

There are mingled some dismal memories 

1 Wild cherries. 



The Lantern-Bearers 211 

with so many that were joyous. Of the fisher- 
wife, for instance, who had cut her throat at 
Canty Bay; and of how I ran with the other 
children to the top of the Quadrant, and beheld 
a posse of silent people escorting a cart, and on 
the cart, bound in a chair, her throat bandaged, 
and the bandage all bloody — horror ! — the 
fisher-wife herself, who continued thenceforth to 
hag-ride my thoughts, and even to-day (as I 
recall the scene) darkens daylight. She was 
lodged in the little old jail in the chief street; 
but whether or no she died there, with a wise 
terror of the worst, I never inquired. She had 
been tippling ; it was but a dingy tragedy ; and 
it seems strange and hard that, after all these 
years, the poor crazy sinner should be still 
pilloried on her cart in the scrap-book of my 
memory. Nor shall I readily forget a certain 
house in the Quadrant where a visitor died, and 
a dark old woman continued to dwell alone 
with the dead body; nor how this old woman 
conceived a hatred to myself and one of my 
cousins, and in the dread hour of the dusk, as we 
were clambering on the garden-walls, opened a 
window in that house of mortality and cursed 



212 The Lantern-Bearers 

us in a shrill voice and with a marrowy choice 
of language. It was a pair of very colourless 
urchins that fled down the lane from this 
remarkable experience ! But I recall with a 
more doubtful sentiment, compounded out of 
fear and exultation, the coil of equinoctial 
tempests ; trumpeting squalls, scouring flaws of 
rain ; the boats with their reefed lugsails 
scudding for the harbour mouth, where danger 
lay, for it was hard to make when the wind 
had any east in it ; the wives clustered with 
blowing shawls at the pier-head, where (if fate 
was against them) they might see boat and 
husband and sons — their whole wealth and 
their whole family — engulfed under their eyes ; 
and (what I saw but once) a troop of neighbours 
forcing such an unfortunate homeward, and she 
squalling and battling in their midst, a figure 
scarcely human, a tragic Maenad. 

These are things that I recall with interest ; 
but what my memory dwells upon the most, I 
have been all this while withholding. It was a 
sport peculiar to the place, and indeed to a 
week or so of our two months' holiday there. 
Maybe it still flourishes in its native spot; for 



The Lantern-Bearers 213 

boys and their pastimes are swayed by periodic 
forces inscrutable to man ; so that tops and 
marbles reappear in their due season, regular 
like the sun and moon ; and the harmless art 
of knucklebones has seen the fall of the Roman 
empire and the rise of the United States. It 
may still flourish in its native spot, but nowhere 
else, I am persuaded; for I tried myself to 
introduce it on Tweedside, and was defeated 
lamentably ; its charm being quite local, like a 
country wine that cannot be exported. 

The idle manner of it was this : — 

Toward the end of September, when school- 
time was drawing near and the nights were 
already black, we would begin to sally from our 
respective villas, each equipped with a tin 
bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so well 
known that it had worn a rut in the commerce 
of Great Britain ; and the grocers, about the due 
time, began to garnish their windows with our 
particular brand of luminary. We wore them 
buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt, and 
over them, such was the rigour of the game, a 
buttoned top-coat They smelled noisomely of 
blistered tin ; they never burned aright, though 



214 The Lantern-Bearers 

they would always burn our fingers; their use 
was naught ; the pleasure of them merely fanci- 
ful ; and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his 
top-coat asked for nothing more. The fisher- 
men used lanterns about their boats, and it was 
from them, I suppose, that we had got the 
hint ; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, nor did we 
ever play at being fishermen. The police 
carried them at their belts, and we had plainly 
copied them in that ; yet we did not pretend to 
be policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have 
had some haunting thoughts of; and we had 
certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns 
were more common, and to certain story-books 
in which we had found them to figure very 
largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure 
of the thing was substantive ; and to be a boy 
with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good 
enough for us. 

When two of these asses met, there would 
be an anxious ' Have you got your lantern ? ' 
and a gratified * Yes ! ' That was the shibbo- 
leth, and very needful too ; for, as it was the 
rule to keep our glory contained, none could 



The Lantern-Bearers 215 

recognise a lantern-bearer, unless (like the 
pole-cat) by the smell. Four or five would 
sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man 
lugger, with nothing but the thwarts above 
them — for the cabin was usually locked, or 
choose out some hollow of the links where 
the wind might whistle overhead. There the 
coats would be unbuttoned and the bull's-eyes 
discovered ; and in the chequering glimmer, 
under the huge windy hall of the night, and 
cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, 
these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch 
together in the cold sand of the links or on 
the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight 
themselves with inappropriate talk. Woe is 
me that I may not give some specimens — 
some of their foresights of life, or deep in- 
quiries into the rudiments of man and nature, 
these were so fiery and so innocent, they were 
so richly silly, so romantically young. But the 
talk, at any rate, was but a condiment; and 
these gatherings themselves only accidents in 
the career of the lantern-bearer. The essence 
of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the 



216 The Lantern-Bearers 

black night; the slide shut, the top-coat 
buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to 
conduct your footsteps or to make your 
glory public : a mere pillar of darkness in 
the dark; and all the while, deep down in 
the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you 
had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult 
and sing over the knowledge. 



II 



It is said that a poet has died young in the 
breast of the most stolid. It may be con- 
tended, rather, that this (somewhat minor) 
bard in almost every case survives, and is 
the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is 
not done to the versatility and the unplumbed 
childishness of man's imagination. His life 
from without may seem but a rude mound of 
mud; there will be some golden chamber at 
the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; 
and for as dark as his pathway seems to the 
observer, he will have some kind of a bull's- 
eye at his belt. 

It would be hard to pick out a career more 



The Lantern- Bearers 217 

cheerless than that of Dancer, the miser, as 
he figures in the ' Old Bailey Reports,' a prey 
to the most sordid persecutions, the butt of his 
neighbourhood, betrayed by his hired man, his 
house beleaguered by the impish school-boy, 
and he himself grinding and fuming and 
impotently fleeing to the law against these 
pin-pricks. You marvel at first that any one 
should willingly prolong a life so destitute of 
charm and dignity; and then you call to 
memory that had he chosen, had he ceased 
to be a miser, he could have been freed at 
once from these trials, and might have built 
himself a castle and gone escorted by a squad- 
ron. For the love of more recondite joys, 
which we cannot estimate, which, it may be, 
we should envy, the man had willingly fore- 
gone both comfort and consideration. ' His 
mind to him a kingdom was ' ; and sure 
enough, digging into that mind, which seems 
at first a dust-heap, we unearth some priceless 
jewels. For Dancer must have had the love 
of power and the disdain of using it, a noble 
character in itself; disdain of many pleasures, 
a chief part of what is commonly called 



218 The Lantern- Bearers 

wisdom ; disdain of the inevitable end, that 
finest trait of mankind; scorn of men's opinions, 
another element of virtue ; and at the back of 
all, a conscience just like yours and mine, 
whining like a cur, swindling like a thimble- 
rigger, but still pointing (there or thereabout) 
to some conventional standard. Here were a 
cabinet portrait to which Hawthorne perhaps 
had done justice; and yet not Hawthorne 
either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay 
not in him to create for us that throb of the 
miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his 
vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows 
not what : insatiable, insane, a god with a 
muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in the 
bosom of the miser, consideration detects the 
poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, 
of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics ; 
and tracing that mean man about his cold 
hearth, and to and fro in his discomfortable 
house, spies within him a blazing bonfire of 
delight. And so with others, who do not 
live by bread alone, but by some cherished 
and perhaps fantastic pleasure; who are meat 
salesmen to the external eye, and possibly to 



The Lantern-Bearers 219 

themselves are Shakespeares, Napoleons, or 
Beethovens; who have not one virtue to rub 
against another in the field of active life, and 
yet perhaps, in the life of contemplation, sit 
with the saints. We see them on the street, 
and we can count their buttons; but heaven 
knows in what they pride themselves! heaven 
knows where they have set their treasure ! 

There is one fable that touches very near 
the quick of life: the fable of the monk who 
passed into the woods, heard a bird break into 
song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found 
himself on his return a stranger at his convent 
gates ; for he had been absent fifty years, and 
of all his comrades there survived but one to 
recognise him. It is not only in the woods 
that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he 
is native there. He sings in the most doleful 
places. The miser hears him and chuckles, 
and the days are moments. With no more 
apparatus than an ill-smelling lantern I have 
evoked him on the naked links. All life that 
is not merely mechanical is spun out of two 
strands: seeking for that bird and hearing 
him. And it is just this that makes life so 



220 The Lantern-Bearers 

hard to value, and the delight of each so 
incommunicable. And just a knowledge of 
this, and a remembrance of those fortunate 
hours in which the bird has sung to us, that 
fills us with such wonder when we turn the 
pages of the realist. There, to be sure, we 
find a picture of life in so far as it consists 
of mud and of old iron, cheap desires and 
cheap fears, that which we are ashamed to 
remember and that which we are careless 
whether we forget; but of the note of that 
time-devouring nightingale we hear no news. 

The case of these writers of romance is most 
obscure. They have been boys and youths; 
they have lingered outside the window of the 
beloved, who was then most probably writing 
to some one else ; they have sat before a sheet 
of paper, and felt themselves mere continents 
of congested poetry, not one line of which 
would flow; they have walked alone in the 
woods, they have walked in cities under the 
countless lamps ; they have been to sea, they 
have hated, they have feared, they have longed 
to knife a man, and maybe done it ; the wild 
taste of life has stung their palate. Or, if you 



The Lantern-Bearers 221 

deny them all the rest, one pleasure at least 
they have tasted to the full — their books are 
there to prove it — the keen pleasure of suc- 
cessful literary composition. And yet they 
fill the globe with volumes, whose cleverness 
inspires me with despairing admiration, and 
whose consistent falsity to all I care to call 
existence, with despairing wrath. If I had no 
better hope than to continue to revolve among 
the dreary and petty businesses, and to be 
moved by the paltry hopes and fears with 
which they surround and animate their heroes, 
I declare I would die now. But there has 
never an hour of mine gone quite so dully 
yet ; if it were spent waiting at a railway junc- 
tion, I would have some scattering thoughts, 
I could count some grains of memory, com- 
pared to which the whole of one of these 
romances seems but dross. 

These writers would retort (if I take them 
properly) that this was very true ; that it was 
the same with themselves and other persons of 
(what they call) the artistic temperament ; that 
in this we were exceptional, and should appar- 
ently be ashamed of ourselves; but that our 



222 The Lantern- Bearers 

works must deal exclusively with (what they 
call) the average man, who was a prodigious 
dull fellow, and quite dead to all but the paltri- 
est considerations. I accept the issue. We can 
only know others by ourselves. The artistic 
temperament (a plague on the expression !) 
does not make us different from our fellow- 
men, or it would make us incapable of writing 
novels ; and the average man (a murrain on 
the word !) is just like you and me, or he 
would not be average. It was Whitman who 
stamped a kind of Birmingham sacredness 
upon the latter phrase ; but Whitman knew 
very well, and showed very nobly, that the av- 
erage man was full of joys and full of a poetry 
of his own. And this harping on life's dulness 
and man's meanness is a loud profession of 
incompetence ; it is one of two things : the 
cry of the blind eye, / cannot see, or the com- 
plaint of the dumb tongue, / cannot utter. To 
draw a life without delights is to prove I have 
not realised it. To picture a man without 
some sort of poetry — well, it goes near to 
prove my case, for it shows an author may 
have little enough. To see Dancer only as a 



The Lantern- Bearers 223 

dirty, old, small-minded, impotently fuming 
man, in a dirty house, besieged by Harrow 
boys, and probably beset by small attorneys, 
is to show myself as keen an observer as 
. . . the Harrow boys. But these young 
gentlemen (with a more becoming modesty) 
were content to pluck Dancer by the coat- 
tails ; they did not suppose they had surprised 
his secret or could put him living in a book: 
and it is there my error would have lain. 
Or say that in the same romance — I continue 
to call these books romances, in the hope of 
giving pain — say that in the same romance, 
which now begins really to take shape, I should 
leave to speak of Dancer, and follow instead 
the Harrow boys; and say that I came on 
some such business as that of my lantern- 
bearers on the links; and described the boys 
as very cold, spat upon by flurries of rain, 
and drearily surrounded, all of which they 
were ; and their talk as silly and indecent, 
which it certainly was. I might upon these 
lines, and had I Zola's genius, turn out, in a 
page or so, a gem of literary art, render the 
lantern-light with the touches of a master, 



224 The Lantern- Bearers 

and lay on the indecency with the ungrudging 
hand of love ; and when all was done, what 
a triumph would my picture be of shallow- 
ness and dulness ! how it would have missed 
the point ! how it would have belied the boys ! 
To the ear of the stenographer, the talk is 
merely silly and indecent; but ask the boys 
themselves, and they are discussing (as it is 
highly proper they should) the possibilities of 
existence. To the eye of the observer they 
are wet and cold and drearily surrounded ; 
but ask themselves, and they are in the 
heaven of a recondite pleasure, the ground of 
which is an ill-smelling lantern. 

Ill 

For, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy 
is often hard to hit. It may hinge at times 
upon a mere accessory, like the lantern, it 
may reside, like Dancer's, in the mysterious 
inwards of psychology. It may consist with 
perpetual failure, and find exercise in the con- 
tinued chase. It has so little bond with ex- 
ternals (such as the observer scribbles in his 



The Lantern-Bearers 225 

note-book) that it may even touch them not; 
and the man's true life, for which he consents 
to live, lie altogether in the field of fancy. The 
clergyman, in his spare hours, may be winning 
battles, the farmer sailing ships, the banker 
reaping triumph in the arts : all leading an- 
other life, plying another trade from that they 
chose ; like the poet's housebuilder, who, after 
all is cased in stone, 

* By his fireside, as impotent fancy prompts, 
Rebuilds it to his liking.' 

In such a case the poetry runs underground. 
The observer (poor soul, with his documents !) 
is all abroad. For to look at the man is 
but to court deception. We shall see the 
trunk from which he draws his nourishment; 
but he himself is above and abroad in the green 
dome of foliage, hummed through by winds 
and nested in by nightingales. And the true 
realism were that- of the poets, to climb up 
after him like a squirrel, and catch some 
glimpse of the heaven for which he lives. 
And the true realism, always and everywhere, 
is that of the poets : to find out where 



226 The Lantern-Bearers 

joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond 
singing. 

For to miss the joy is to miss all. In 
the joy of the actors lies the sense of any 
action. That is the explanation, that the 
excuse. To one who has not the secret of 
the lanterns, the scene upon the links is 
meaningless. And hence the haunting and 
truly spectral unreality of realistic books. 
Hence, when we read the English realists, the 
incredulous wonder with which we observe the 
hero's constancy under the submerging tide of 
dulness, and how he bears up with his jibbing 
sweetheart, and endures the chatter of idiot 
girls, and stands by his whole unfeatured wil- 
derness of an existence, instead of seeking 
relief in drink or foreign travel. Hence in the 
French, in that meat-market of middle-aged 
sensuality, the disgusted surprise with which 
we see the hero drift sidelong, and practically 
quite untempted, into every description of mis- 
conduct and dishonour. In each, we miss the 
personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, 
that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what 
is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; 



The Lantern-Bearers 227 

in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of 
soaring away like a balloon into the colours of 
the sunset ; each is true, each inconceivable ; 
for no man lives in the external truth, among 
salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasma- 
goric chamber of his brain, with the painted 
windows and the storied walls. 

Of this falsity we have had a recent example 
from a man who knows far better — Tolstoi's 
Powers of Darkness. Here is a piece full of 
force and truth, yet quite untrue. For before 
Mikita was led into so dire a situation he was 
tempted, and temptations are beautiful at least 
in part ; and a work which dwells on the ugli- 
ness of crime and gives no hint of any loveli- 
ness in the temptation, sins against the modesty 
of life, and even when a Tolstoi writes it, sinks 
to melodrama. The peasants are not under- 
stood ; they saw their life in fairer colours; 
even the deaf girl was clothed in poetry for 
Mikita, or he had never fallen. And so, once 
again, even an Old Bailey melodrama, without 
some brightness of poetry and lustre of exist- 
ence, falls into the inconceivable and ranks 
with fairy tales. 



228 Ths Lantern-Bearers 



IV 

In nobler books we are moved with some- 
thing like the emotions of life ; and this 
emotion is very variously provoked. We are 
so moved when Levine labours in the field, 
when Andre sinks beyond emotion, when 
Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough meet 
beside the river, when Antony, ' not cowardly, 
puts off his helmet,' when Kent has infinite 
pity on the dying Lear, when, in Dostoieffky's 
Despised and Rejected, the uncomplaining hero 
drains his cup of suffering and virtue. These 
are notes that please the great heart of man. 
Not only love, and the fields, and the bright 
face of danger, but sacrifice and death and 
unmerited suffering humbly supported, touch 
in us the vein of the poetic. We love to 
think of them, we long to try them, we are 
humbly hopeful that we may prove heroes 
also. 

We have heard, perhaps, too much of lesser 
matters. Here is the door, here is the open 
air. Itur in antiquum silvam. 



VIII 

A CHAPTER ON DREAMS 

The past is all of one texture — whether 

feigned or suffered — whether acted out in 

three dimensions, or only witnessed in that 

small theatre of the brain which we keep 

brightly lighted all night long, after the jets 

are down, and darkness and sleep reign 

undisturbed in the remainder of the body. 

There is no distinction on the face of our 

experiences ; one is vivid indeed, and one dull, 

and one pleasant, and another agonising to 

remember ; but which of them is what we call 

true, and which a dream, there is not one hair 

to prove. The past stands on a precarious 

footing; another straw split in the field of 

metaphysic, and behold us robbed of it. 

There is scarce a family that can count four 

generations but lays a claim to some dormant 

229 



230 A Chapter on Dreams 

title or some castle and estate : a claim not 
prosecutable in any court of law, but flattering 
to the fancy and a great alleviation of idle 
hours. A man's claim to his own past is yet 
less valid. A paper might turn up (in proper 
story-book fashion) in the secret drawer of an 
old ebony secretary, and restore your family 
to its ancient honours, and reinstate mine in a 
certain West Indian islet (not far from St. 
Kitt's, as beloved tradition hummed in my 
young ears) which was once ours, and is now 
unjustly someone else's, and for that matter 
(in the state of the sugar trade) is not worth 
anything to anybody. I do not say that these 
revolutions are likely ; only no man can deny 
that they are possible; and the past, on the 
other hand, is lost for ever : our old days and 
deeds, our old selves, too, and the very world 
in which these scenes were acted, all brought 
down to the same faint residuum as a last 
night's dream, to some incontinuous images, 
and an echo in the chambers of the brain. 
Not an hour, not a mood, not a glance of 
the eye, can we revoke ; it is all gone, past 
conjuring. And yet conceive us robbed of it, 



A Chapter on Dreams 231 

conceive that little thread of memory that we 
trail behind us broken at the pocket's edge ; 
and in what naked nullity should we be left ! 
for we only guide ourselves, and only know our- 
selves, by these air-painted pictures of the past. 
Upon these grounds, there are some among 
us who claimed to have lived longer and more 
richly than their neighbours; when they lay 
asleep they claim they were still active ; and 
among the treasures of memory that all men 
review for their amusement, these count in no 
second place the harvests of their dreams. 
There is one of this kind whom I have in my 
eye, and whose case is perhaps unusual enough 
to be described. He was from a child an 
ardent and uncomfortable dreamer. When he 
had a touch of fever at night, and the room 
swelled and shrank, and his clothes, hanging 
on a nail, now loomed up instant to the big- 
ness of a church, and now drew away into a 
horror of infinite distance and infinite littleness, 
the poor soul was very well aware of what 
must follow, and struggled hard against the 
approaches of that slumber which was the 
beginning of sorrows. But his struggles were 



232 A Chapter on Dreams 

in vain ; sooner or later the night-hag would 
have him by the throat, and pluck him, stran- 
gling and screaming, from his sleep. His 
dreams were at times commonplace enough, at 
times very strange : at times they were almost 
formless, he would be haunted, for instance, by 
nothing more definite than a certain hue of 
brown, which he did not mind in the least 
while he was awake, but feared and loathed 
while he was dreaming; at times, again, they 
took on every detail of circumstance, as when 
once he supposed he must swallow the popu- 
lous world, and awoke screaming with the 
horror of the thought. The two chief troubles 
of his very narrow existence — the practical and 
everyday trouble of school tasks and the ulti- 
mate and airy one of hell and judgment — were 
often confounded together into one appalling 
nightmare. He seemed to himself to stand 
before the Great White Throne ; he was called 
on, poor little devil, to recite some form of words, 
on which his destiny depended ; his tongue stuck, 
his memory was blank, hell gaped for him ; 
and he would awake, clinging to the curtain- 
rod with his knees to his chin. 



A Chapter on Dreams 233 

These were extremely poor experiences, 
on the whole ; and at that time of life my 
dreamer would have very willingly parted with 
Lis power of dreams. But presently, in the 
course of his growth, the cries and physical 
contortions passed away, seemingly for ever; 
his visions were still for the most part miser- 
able, but they were more constantly supported ; 
and he would awake with no more extreme 
symptom than a flying heart, a freezing scalp, 
cold sweats, and the speechless midnight fear. 
His dreams, too, as befitted a mind better 
stocked with particulars, became more circum- 
stantial, and had more the air and continuity of 
life. The look of the world beginning to take 
hold on his attention, scenery came to play 
a part in his sleeping as well as in his waking 
thoughts, so that he Ivould take long, un- 
eventful journeys and see strange towns and 
beautiful places as he lay in bed. And, what 
is more significant, an odd taste that he had 
for the Georgian costume and for stories laid 
in that period of English history, began to rule 
the features of his dreams; so that he mas- 
queraded there in a three-cornered hat, and 



234 A Chapter on Dreams 

was much engaged with Jacobite conspiracy 
oetween the hour for bed and that for break- 
fast. About the same time, he began to read 
in his dreams — tales, for the most part, and 
for the most part after the manner of G. P. 
R. James, but so incredibly more vivid and 
moving than any printed book, that he has 
ever since been malcontent with literature. 

And then, while he was yet a student, there 
came to him a dream-adventure which he has no 
anxiety to repeat ; he began, that is to say, to 
dream in sequence and thus to lead a double 
life — one of the day, one of the night — one 
that he had every reason to believe was the 
true one, another that he had no means of 
proving to be false. I should have said he 
studied, or was by way of studying, at Edin- 
burgh College, which (it may be supposed) was 
how I came to know him. Well, in his dream- 
life, he passed a long day in the surgical theatre, 
his heart in his mouth, his teeth on edge, seeing 
monstrous malformations and the abhorred 
dexterity of surgeons. In a heavy, rainy, 
foggy evening he came forth into the South 
Bridge, turned up the High Street, and entered 



A Chapter on Dreams 235 

the door of a tall land, at the top of which he 
supposed himself to lodge. All night long, in 
his wet clothes, he climbed the stairs, stair after 
stair in endless series, and at every second flight 
a flaring lamp with a reflector. All night long, 
he brushed by single persons passing downward 
— beggarly women of the street, great, weary, 
muddy labourers, poor scarecrows of men, pale 
parodies of women — but all drowsy and weary 
like himself, and all single, and all brushing 
against him as they passed. In the end, out of 
a northern window, he would see day beginning 
to whiten over the Firth, give up the ascent, 
turn to descend, and in a breath be back again 
upon the streets, in his wet clothes, in the wet, 
haggard dawn, trudging to another day of mon- 
strosities and operations. Time went quicker 
in the life of dreams, some seven hours (as near 
as he can guess) to one ; and it went, besides, 
more intensely, so that the gloom of these fan- 
cied experiences clouded the day, and he had 
not shaken off their shadow ere it was time to 
lie down and to renew them. I cannot tell how 
long it was that he endured this discipline ; but 
it was long enough to leave a great black blot 



236 A Chapter on Dreams 

upon his memory, long enough to send him, 
trembling for his reason, to the doors of a 
certain doctor ; whereupon with a simple 
draught he was restored to the common lot 
of man. 

The poor gentleman has since been troubled 
by nothing of the sort ; indeed, his nights were 
for some while like other men's, now blank, now 
chequered with dreams, and these sometimes 
charming, sometimes appalling, but except for 
an occasional vividness, of no extraordinary 
kind. I will just note one of these occasions, 
ere I pass on to what makes my dreamer truly 
interesting. It seemed to him that he was in 
the first floor of a rough hill-farm. The room 
showed some poor efforts at gentility, a carpet 
on the floor, a piano, I think, against the wall ; 
but, for all these refinements, there was no 
mistaking he was in a moorland place, among 
hillside people, and set in miles of heather. 
He looked down from the window upon a bare 
farmyard, that seemed to have been long dis- 
used. A great, uneasy stillness lay upon the 
world. There was no sign of the farm-folk or 
of any live stock, save for an old, brown, curly 



A Chapter on Dreams 237 

dog of the retriever breed, who sat close in 
against the wall of the house and seemed to be 
dozing. Something about this dog disquieted 
the dreamer; it was quite a nameless feeling, 
for the beast looked right enough — indeed, he 
was so old and dull and dusty and broken-down, 
that he should rather have awakened pity ; and 
yet the conviction came and grew upon the 
dreamer that this was no proper dog at all, but 
something hellish. A great many dozing sum- 
mer flies hummed about the yard ; and presently 
the dog thrust forth his paw, caught a fly in his 
open palm, carried it to his mouth like an ape, 
and looking suddenly up at the dreamer in the 
window, winked to him with one eye. The 
dream went on, it matters not how it went ; it 
was a good dream as dreams go; but there 
was nothing in the sequel worthy of that 
devilish brown dog. And the point of interest 
for me lies partly in that very fact : that having 
found so singular an incident, my imperfect 
dreamer should prove unable to carry the tale 
to a fit end and fall back on indescribable noises 
and indiscriminate horrors. It would be differ- 
ent now ; he knows his business better ! 



238 A Chapter on Dreams 

For, to approach at last the point : This 
honest fellow had long been in the custom of 
setting himself to sleep with tales, and so had 
his father before him ; but these were irrespon- 
sible inventions, told for the teller's pleasure, 
with no eye to the crass public or the thwart 
reviewer: tales where a thread might be 
dropped, or one adventure quitted for another, 
on fancy's least suggestion. So that the little 
people who manage man's internal theatre had 
not as yet received a very rigorous training; 
and played upon their stage like children who 
should have slipped into the house and found 
it empty, rather than like drilled actors per- 
forming a set piece to a huge hall of faces. 
But presently my dreamer began to turn his 
former amusement of story-telling to (what is 
called) account; by which I mean that he 
began to write and sell his tales. Here was 
he, and here were the little people who did that 
part of his business, in quite new conditions. 
The stories must now be trimmed and pared 
and set upon all fours, they must run from a 
beginning to an end and fit (after a manner) 
with the laws of life ; the pleasure, in one word, 



A Chapter o?i Dreams 239 

had become a business ; and that not only for the 
dreamer, but for the little people of his theatre. 
These understood the change as well as he. 
When he lay down to prepare himself for sleep, 
he no longer sought amusement, but printable 
and profitable tales ; and after he had dozed 
off in his box-seat, his little people continued 
their evolutions with the same mercantile de- 
signs. All other forms of dream deserted him 
but two : he still occasionally reads the most 
delightful books, he still visits at times the most 
delightful places; and it is perhaps worthy 
of note that to these same places, and to one 
in particular, he returns at intervals of months 
and years, finding new field-paths, visiting new 
neighbours, beholding that happy valley under 
new effects of noon and dawn and sunset. But 
all the rest of the family of visions is quite lost 
to him : the common, mangled version of yes- 
terday's affairs, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones 
nightmare, rumoured to be the child of toasted 
cheese — these and their like are gone; and, for 
the most part, whether awake or asleep, he is 
simply occupied — he or his little people — in 
consciously making stories for the market. 



240 A Chapter on Dreams 

This dreamer (like many other persons) has 
encountered some trifling vicissitudes of fortune. 
When the bank begins to send letters and the 
butcher to linger at the back gate, he sets to 
belabouring his brains after a story, for that 
is his readiest money-winner ; and, behold ! at 
once the little people begin to bestir themselves 
in the same quest, and labour all night long, 
and all night long set before him truncheons of 
tales upon their lighted theatre. No fear of 
his being frightened now ; the flying heart and 
the frozen scalp are things bygone; applause, 
growing applause, growing interest, growing 
exultation in his own cleverness (for he takes 
all the credit), and at last a jubilant leap to 
wakefulness, with the cry, ■ I have it, that'll 
do ! ' upon his lips : with such and similar 
emotions he sits at these nocturnal dramas, 
with such outbreaks, like Claudius in the play, 
he scatters the performance in the midst. Often 
enough the waking is a disappointment : he has 
been too deep asleep, as I explain the thing ; 
drowsiness has gained his little people, they 
have gone stumbling and maundering through 
their parts; and the play, to the awakened 






A Chapter on Dreams 241 

mind, is seen to be a tissue of absurdities. 
And yet how often have these sleepless 
Brownies done him honest service, and given 
him, as he sat idly taking his pleasure in the 
boxes, better tales than he could fashion for 
himself. 

Here is one, exactly as it came to him. It 
seemed he was the son of a very rich and 
wicked man, the owner of broad acres and a 
most damnable temper. The dreamer (and 
that was the son) had lived much abroad, on 
purpose to avoid his parent; and when at 
length he returned to England, it was to find 
him married again to a young wife, who was 
supposed to suffer cruelly and to loathe her 
yoke. Because of this marriage (as the dreamer 
indistinctly understood) it was desirable for 
father and son to have a meeting ; and yet 
both being proud and both angry, neither 
would condescend upon a visit. Meet they did 
accordingly, in a desolate, sandy country by the 
sea; and there they quarrelled, and the son, 
stung by some intolerable insult, struck down 
the father dead. No suspicion was aroused ; 
the dead man was found and buried, and the 



242 A Chapter on Dreams 

dreamer succeeded to the broad estates, and 
found himself installed under the same roof 
with his father's widow, for whom no provision 
had been made. These two lived very much 
alone, as people may after a bereavement, sat 
down to table together, shared the long even- 
ings, and grew daily better friends; until it 
seemed to him of a sudden that she was prying 
about dangerous matters, that she had conceived 
a notion of his guilt, that she watched him and 
tried him with questions. He drew back from 
her company as men draw back from a preci- 
pice suddenly discovered ; and yet so strong 
was the attraction that he would drift again 
and again into the old intimacy, and again 
and again be startled back by some suggestive 
question or some inexplicable meaning in her 
eye. So they lived at cross purposes, a life 
full of broken dialogue, challenging glances, 
and suppressed passion ; until, one day, he saw 
the woman slipping from the house in a veil, 
followed her to the station, followed her in the 
train to the seaside country, and out over the 
sandhills to the very place where the murder 
was done. There she began to grope among 



A Chapter on Dreams 243 

the bents, he watching her, flat upon his face; 
and presently she had something in her hand — 
I cannot remember what it was, but it was 
deadly evidence against the dreamer — and as 
she held it up to look at it, perhaps from the 
shock of the discovery, her foot slipped, and 
she hung at some peril on the brink of the tall 
sand-wreaths. He had no thought but to 
spring up and rescue her ; and there they stood 
face to face, she with that deadly matter openly 
in her hand — his very presence on the spot 
another link of proof. It was plain she was 
about to speak, but this was more than he 
could bear — he could bear to be lost, but not 
to talk of it with his destroyer ; and he cut her 
short with trivial conversation. Arm in arm, 
they returned together to the train, talking he 
knew not what, made the journey back in the 
same carriage, sat down to dinner, and passed 
the evening in the drawing-room as in the past. 
But suspense and fear drummed in the dreamer's 
bosom. ' She has not denounced me yet ' — so 
his thoughts ran — ' when will she denounce me ? 
Will it be to-morrow ? ' And it was not to- 
morrow, nor the next day, nor the next; and 



244 A Chapter on Dreams 

their life settled back on the old terms, only 
that she seemed kinder than before, and that, 
as for him, the burthen of his suspense and 
wonder grew daily more unbearable, so that he 
wasted away like a man with a disease. Once, 
indeed, he broke all bounds of decency, seized 
an occasion when she was abroad, ransacked 
her room, and at last, hidden away among her 
jewels, found the damning evidence. There he 
stood, holding this thing, which was his life, in 
the hollow of his hand, and marvelling at her 
inconsequent behaviour, that she should seek, 
and keep, and yet not use it ; and then the 
door opened, and behold herself. So, once 
more, they stood, eye to eye, with the evidence 
between them ; and once more she raised to 
him a face brimming with some communication ; 
and once more he shied away from speech and 
cut her off. But before he left the room, which 
he had turned upside down, he laid back his 
death-warrant where he had found it; and at 
that, her face lighted up. The next thing he 
heard, she was explaining to her maid, with 
some ingenious falsehood, the disorder of her 
things. Flesh and blood could bear the strain 



A Chapter on Dreams 245 

no longer ; and I think it was the next morn- 
ing (though chronology is always hazy in the 
theatre of the mind) that he burst from his 
reserve. They had been breakfasting together 
in one corner of a great, parqueted, sparely- 
furnished room of many windows ; all the time 
of the meal she had tortured him with sly 
allusions ; and no sooner were the servants 
gone, and these two protagonists alone together, 
than he leaped to his feet. She too sprang up, 
with a pale face ; with a pale face, she heard 
him as he raved out his complaint : Why did 
she torture him so ? she knew all, she knew he 
was no enemy to her ; why did she not denounce 
him at once ? what signified her whole behav- 
iour ? why did she torture him ? and yet again, 
why did she torture him ? And when he had 
done, she fell upon her knees, and with out- 
stretched hands : ' Do you not understand ? ' 
she cried. ' I love you ! ' 

Hereupon, with a pang of wonder and 
mercantile delight, the dreamer awoke. His 
mercantile delight was not of long endurance ; 
for it soon became plain that in this spirited 
tale there were unmarketable elements: which 



246 A Chapter on Dreams 

is just the reason why you have it here so 
briefly told. But his wonder has still kept 
growing ; and I think the reader's will also, if 
he consider it ripely. For now he sees why I 
speak of the little people as of substantive 
inventors and performers. To the end they 
had kept their secret. I will go bail for the 
dreamer (having excellent grounds for valuing 
his candour) that he had no guess whatever at 
the motive of the woman — the hinge of the 
whole well-invented plot — until the instant of 
that highly dramatic declaration. It was not 
his tale; it was the little people's! And 
observe : not only was the secret kept, the 
story was told with really guileful craftsman- 
ship. The conduct of both actors is (in the 
cant phrase) psychologically correct, and the 
emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising 
climax. I am awake now, and I know this 
trade ; and yet I cannot better it. I am awake, 
and I live by this business ; and yet I could 
not outdo — could not perhaps equal — that 
crafty artifice (as of some old, experienced car- 
penter of plays, some Dennery or Sardou) by 
which the same situation is twice presented and 



A Chapter on Dreams 247 

the two actors twice brought face to face over 
the evidence, only once it is in her hand, once 
in his — and these in their due order, the least 
dramatic first. The more I think of it, the 
more I am moved to press upon the world my 
question : Who are the Little People ? They 
are near connections of the dreamer's, beyond 
doubt; they share in his financial worries and 
have an eye to the bank-book ; they share 
plainly in his training ; they have plainly learned 
like him to build the scheme of a considerate 
story and to arrange emotion in progressive 
order ; only I think they have more talent ; 
and one thing is beyond doubt, they can tell 
him a story piece by piece, like a serial, and 
keep him all the while in ignorance of where 
they aim. Who are they, then ? and who is 
the dreamer ? 

Well, as regards the dreamer, I can answer 
that, for he is no less a person than myself ; — 
as I might have told you from the beginning, 
only that the critics murmur over my consistent 
egotism ; — and as I am positively forced to tell 
you now, or I could advance but little farther 
with my story. And for the Little People, 



248 A Chapter on Dreams 

what shall I say they are but just my Brownies, 
God bless them ! who do one-half my work for 
me while I am fast asleep, and in all human 
likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when I 
am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for 
myself. That part which is done while I am 
sleeping is the Brownies' part beyond conten- 
tion ; but that which is done when I am up and 
about is by no means necessarily mine, since all 
goes to show the Brownies have a hand in it 
even then. Here is a doubt that much concerns 
my conscience. For myself — what I call I, my 
conscious ego, the denizen of the pineal gland 
unless he has changed his residence since Des- 
cartes, the man with the conscience and the 
variable bank-account, the man with the hat 
and the boots, and the privilege of voting and 
not carrying his candidate at the general elec- 
tions — I am sometimes tempted to suppose he 
is no story-teller at all, but a creature as matter 
of fact as any cheesemonger or any cheese, and 
a realist bemired up to the ears in actuality ; so 
that, by that account, the whole of my published 
fiction should be the single-handed product of 
some Brownie, some Familiar, some unseen 



A Chapter on Dreams 249 

collaborator, whom I keep locked in a back 
garret, while I get all the praise and he but a 
share (which I cannot prevent him getting) of 
the pudding. I am an excellent adviser, some- 
thing like Moliere's servant ; I pull back and I 
cut down ; and I dress the whole in the best 
words and sentences that I can find and make ; 
I hold the pen, too ; and I do the sitting at the 
table, which is about the worst of it ; and when 
all is done, I make up the manuscript and pay 
for the registration ; so that, on the whole, I 
have some claim to share, though not so largely 
as I do, in the profits of our common enterprise. 
I can but give an instance or so of what 
part is done sleeping and what part awake, and 
leave the reader to share what laurels there are, 
at his own nod, between myself and my collab- 
orators; and to do this I will first take a 
book that a number of persons have been polite 
enough to read, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll 
and Mr. Hyde. I had long been trying to 
write a story on this subject, to find a body, a 
vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double 
being which must at times come in upon and 
overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature. 



250 A Chapter on Dreams 

I had even written one, The Travelling Com- 
panion, which was returned by an editor on the 
plea that it was a work of genius and indecent, 
and which I burned the other day on the 
ground that it was not a work of genius, and 
that Jekyll had supplanted it. Then came one 
of those financial fluctuations to which (with an 
elegant modesty) I have hitherto referred in the 
third person. For two days I went about rack- 
ing my brains for a plot of any sort ; and on 
the second night I dreamed the scene at the 
window, and a scene afterwards split in two, in 
which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the 
powder and underwent the change in the 
presence of his pursuers. All the rest was 
made awake, and consciously, although I think 
I can trace in much of it the manner of my 
Brownies. The meaning of the tale is therefore 
mine, and had long pre-existed in my garden 
of Adonis, and tried one body after another in 
vain ; indeed, I do most of the morality, worse 
luck ! and my Brownies have not a rudiment of 
what we call a conscience. Mine, too, is the 
setting, mine the characters. All that was 
given me was the matter of three scenes, and 






A Chapter on Dreams 251 

the central idea of a voluntary change becom- 
ing involuntary. Will it be thought ungenerous, 
after I have been so liberally ladling out praise 
to my unseen collaborators, if I here toss them 
over, bound hand and foot, into the arena of 
the critics ? For the business of the powders, 
which so many have censured, is, I am relieved 
to say, not mine at all but the Brownies'. Of 
another tale, in case the reader should have 
glanced at it, I may say a word : the not very 
defensible story of Olalla. Here the court, the 
mother, the mother's niche, Olalla, Olalla's 
chamber, the meetings on the stair, the broken 
window, the ugly scene of the bite, were all 
given me in bulk and detail as I have tried to 
write them; to this I added only the external 
scenery (for in my dream I never was beyond 
the court), the portrait, the characters of Felipe 
and the priest, the moral, such as it is, and the 
last pages, such as, alas ! they are. And I may 
even say that in this case the moral itself was 
given me; for it arose immediately on a com- 
parison of the mother and the daughter, and 
from the hideous trick of atavism in the first. 
Sometimes a parabolic sense is still more unde- 



2 $2 A Chapter on Dreams 

niably present in a dream ; sometimes I cannot 
but suppose my Brownies have been aping 
Bunyan, and yet in no case with what would 
possibly be called a moral in a tract ; never 
with the ethical narrowness ; conveying hints 
instead of life's larger limitations and that sort 
of sense which we seem to perceive in the ara- 
besque of time and space. 

For the most part, it will be seen, my Brownies 
are somewhat fantastic, like their stories hot and 
hot, full of passion and the picturesque, alive 
with animating incident ; and they have no prej- 
udice against the supernatural. But the other 
day they gave me a surprise, entertaining me 
with a love-story, a little April comedy, which I 
ought certainly to hand over to the author of 
A Chance Acquaititance, for he could write it as 
it should be written, and I am sure (although I 
mean to try) that I cannot. — But who would 
have supposed that a Brownie of mine should 
invent a tale for Mr. Howells ? 



IX 

BEGGARS 

I 

In a pleasant, airy, up-hill country, it was my 
fortune when I was young to make the acquaint- 
ance of a certain beggar. I call him beggar, 
though he usually allowed his coat and his 
shoes (which were open-mouthed, indeed) to 
beg for him. He was the wreck of an athletic 
man, tall, gaunt, and bronzed ; far gone in con- 
sumption, with that disquieting smile of the 
mortally stricken on his face; but still active 
afoot, still with the brisk military carriage, the 
ready military salute. Three ways led through 
this piece of country ; and as I was inconstant 
in my choice, I believe he must often have 
awaited me in vain. But often enough, he 
caught me; often enough, from some place of 

253 



254 Beggars 

ambush by the roadside, he would spring 
suddenly forth in the regulation attitude, and 
launching at once into his inconsequential talk, 
fall into step with me upon my farther course. 
'A fine morning, sir, though perhaps a trifle 
inclining to rain. I hope I see you well, sir. 
Why, no, sir, I don't feel as hearty myself as I 
could wish, but I am keeping about my ordi- 
nary. I am pleased to meet you on the road, 
sir. I assure you I quite look forward to one 
of our little conversations.' He loved the sound 
of his own voice inordinately, and though (with 
something too off-hand to call servility) he 
would always hasten to agree with anything 
you said, yet he could never suffer you to say 
it to an end. By what transition he slid to 
his favourite subject I have no memory; but 
we had never been long together on the way 
before he was dealing, in a very military 
manner, with the English poets. ' Shelley 
was a fine poet, sir, though a trifle atheis- 
tical in his opinions. His Queen Mab, sir, 
is quite an atheistical work. Scott, sir, is 
not so poetical a writer. With the works 
of Shakespeare I am not so well acquainted, 



Beggars 255 

but he was a fine poet. Keats — John Keats, 
sir — he was a very fine poet.' With such 
references, such trivial criticism, such loving 
parade of his own knowledge, he would be- 
guile the road, striding forward up-hill, his 
staff now clapped to the ribs of his deep, 
resonant chest, now swinging in the air with 
the remembered jauntiness of the private 
soldier; and all the while his toes looking 
out of his boots, and his shirt looking out 
of his elbows, and death looking out of his 
smile, and his big, crazy frame shaken by 
accesses of cough. 

He would often go the whole way home 
with me: often to borrow a book, and that 
book always a poet. Off he would march, 
to continue his mendicant rounds, with the 
volume slipped into the pocket of his ragged 
coat; and although he would sometimes keep 
it quite a while, yet it came always back 
again at last, not much the worse for its 
travels into beggardom. And in this way, 
doubtless, his knowledge grew and his glib, 
random criticism took a wider range. But my 
library was not the first he had drawn upon : 



256 Beggars 

at our first encounter, he was already brimful 
of Shelley and the atheistical Queen Mab, and 
* Keats — John Keats, sir.' And I have often 
wondered how he came by these acquirements ; 
just as I often wondered how he fell to be a 
beggar. He had served through the Mutiny — 
of which (like so many people) he could tell 
practically nothing beyond the names of places, 
and that it was 'difficult work, sir,' and very 
hot, or that so-and-so was 'a very fine com- 
mander, sir.' He was far too smart a man to 
have remained a private; in the nature of 
things, he must have won his stripes. And 
yet here he was without a pension. When I 
touched on this problem, he would content 
himself with diffidently offering me advice. 
'A man should be very careful when he is 
young, sir. If you'll excuse me saying so, a 
spirited young gentleman like yourself, sir, 
should be very careful. I was perhaps a trifle 
inclined to atheistical opinions myself.' For 
(perhaps with a deeper wisdom than we are 
inclined in these days to admit) he plainly 
bracketed agnosticism with beer and skittles. 
Keats — John Keats, sir — and Shelley were 



Beggars 257 

his favourite bards. I cannot remember if I 
tried him with Rossetti ; but I know his taste 
to a hair, and if ever I did, he must have doted 
on that author. What took him was a richness 
in the speech ; he loved the exotic, the unex- 
pected word ; the moving cadence of a phrase ; 
a vague sense of emotion (about nothing) in 
the very letters of the alphabet : the romance 
of language. His honest head was very nearly 
empty, his intellect like a child's ; and when he 
read his favourite authors, he can almost never 
have understood what he was reading. Yet the 
taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive ; I 
tried in vain to offer him novels; he would 
none of them, he cared for nothing but romantic 
language that he could not understand. The 
case may be commoner than we suppose. I 
am reminded of a lad who was laid in the next 
cot to a friend of mine in a public hospital, 
and who was no sooner installed than he sent 
out (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap 
Shakespeare. My friend pricked up his ears ; 
fell at once in talk with his new neighbour, and 
was ready, when the book arrived, to make a 
singular discovery. For this lover of great 



258 Beggars 

literature understood not one sentence out of 
twelve, and his favourite part was that of which 
he understood the least — the inimitable, mouth- 
filling rodomontade of the ghost in Hamlet. 
It was a bright day in hospital when my friend 
expounded the sense of this beloved jargon : 
a task for which I am willing to believe my 
friend was very fit, though I can never regard 
it as an easy one. I know indeed a point or 
two, on which I would gladly question Mr. 
Shakespeare, that lover of big words, could he 
revisit the glimpses of the moon, or could I 
myself climb backward to the spacious days of 
Elizabeth. But in the second case, I should 
most likely pretermit these questionings, and 
take my place instead in the pit at the Black- 
friars, to hear the actor in his favourite part, 
playing up to Mr. Bjurbage, and rolling out — as 
I seem to hear him — with a ponderous gusto — 

1 Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel 1 d.' 

What a pleasant chance, if we could go there 
in a party! and what a surprise for Mr. Bur- 
bage, when the ghost received the honours of 
the evening ! 



Beggars 259 

As for my old soldier, like Mr. Burbage and 
Mr. Shakespeare, he is long since dead; and 
now lies buried, I suppose, and nameless and 
quite forgotten, in some poor city graveyard. — 
But not for me, you brave heart, have you been 
buried ! For me, you are still afoot, tasting the 
sun and air, and striding southward. By the 
groves of Comiston and beside the Hermitage 
of Braid, by the Hunters' Tryst, and where the 
curlews and plovers cry around Fairmilehead, 
I see and hear you, stalwartly carrying your 
deadly sickness, cheerfully discoursing of un- 
comprehended poets. 

II 

The thought of the old soldier recalls that of 
another tramp, his counterpart. This was a 
little, lean, and fiery man, with the eyes of a 
dog and the face of a gipsy; whom I found 
one morning encamped with his wife and 
children and his grinder's wheel, beside the 
burn of Kinnaird. To this beloved dell I 
went, at that time, daily; and daily the knife- 
grinder and I (for as long as his tent continued 
pleasantly to interrupt my little wilderness) sat 



260 Beggars 

on two stones, and smoked, and plucked grass, 
and talked to the tune of the brown water. His 
children were mere whelps, they fought and bit 
among the fern like vermin. His wife was a 
mere squaw ; I saw her gather brush and tend 
the kettle, but she never ventured to address 
her lord while I was present. The tent was a 
mere gipsy hovel, like a sty for pigs. But the 
grinder himself had the fine self-sufficiency and 
grave politeness of the hunter and the savage ; 
he did me the honours of this dell, which had 
been mine but the day before, took me far into 
the secrets of his life, and used me (I am proud 
to remember) as a friend. 

Like my old soldier, he was far gone in the 
national complaint. Unlike him, he had a 
vulgar taste in letters ; scarce flying higher 
than the story papers; probably finding no 
difference, certainly seeking none, between 
Tannahill and Burns; his noblest thoughts, 
whether of poetry or music, adequately em- 
bodied in that somewhat obvious ditty, 

'Will ye gang, lassie, gang 
To the braes o' Balquidder : ' 
— which is indeed apt to echo in the ears of 



Beggars 261 

Scottish children, and to him, in view of his 
experience, must have found a special directness 
of address. But if he had no fine sense of 
poetry in letters, he felt with a deep joy the 
poetry of life. You should have heard him 
speak of what he loved; of the tent pitched 
beside the talking water ; of the stars overhead 
at night; of the blest return of morning, the 
peep of day over the moors, the awaking birds 
among the birches ; how he abhorred the long 
winter shut in cities ; and with what delight, at 
the return of the spring, he once more pitched 
his camp in the living out-of-doors. But we 
were a pair of tramps; and to you, who are 
doubtless sedentary and a consistent first-class 
passenger in life, he would scarce have laid 
himself so open ; — to you, he might have been 
content to tell his story of a ghost — that of a 
buccaneer with his pistols as he lived — whom 
he had once encountered in a seaside cave 
near Buckie ; and that would have been enough, 
for that would have shown you the mettle of 
the man. Here was a piece of experience solidly 
and livingly built up in words, here was a story 
created, teres atque rotmidtis. 



262 Beggars 

And to think of the old soldier, that lover of 
the literary bards ! He had visited stranger 
spots than any seaside cave ; encountered men 
more terrible than any spirit ; done and dared 
and suffered in that incredible, unsung epic of 
the Mutiny War ; played his part with the field 
force of Delhi, beleaguering and beleaguered; 
shared in that enduring, savage anger and con- 
tempt of death and decency that, for long 
months together, bedevil'd and inspired the 
army; was hurled to and fro in the battle- 
smoke of the assault ; was there, perhaps, where 
Nicholson fell; was there when the attacking 
column, with hell upon every side, found the 
soldier's enemy — strong drink, and the lives of 
tens of thousands trembled in the scale, and the 
fate of the flag of England staggered. And of 
all this he had no more to say than ' hot work, 
sir,' or i the army suffered a great deal, sir,' or 
1 1 believe General Wilson, sir, was not very 
highly thought of in the papers.' His life was 
naught to him, the vivid pages of experience 
quite blank : in words his pleasure lay — 
melodious, agitated words — printed words, 
about that which he had never seen and was 



Beggars 263 

connatally incapable of comprehending. We 
have here two temperaments face to face ; both 
untrained, unsophisticated, surprised (we may 
say) in the egg ; both boldly charactered : — 
that of the artist, the lover and artificer of 
words ; that of the maker, the seeer, the lover 
and forger of experience. If the one had a 
daughter and the other had a son, and these 
married, might not some illustrious writer count 
descent from the beggar-soldier and the needy 
knife-grinder ? 



Ill 

Every one lives by selling something, what- 
ever be his right to it. The burglar sells at 
the same time his own skill and courage and 
my silver plate (the whole at the most moderate 
figure) to a Jew receiver. The bandit sells 
the traveller an article of prime necessity : that 
traveller's life. And as for the old soldier, who 
stands for central mark to my capricious figures 
of eight, he dealt in a specialty; for he was 
the only beggar in the world who ever gave me 
pleasure for my money. He had learned a 



264 Beggars 

school of manners in the barracks and had the 
sense to cling to it, accosting strangers with 
a regimental freedom, thanking patrons with a 
merely regimental difference, sparing you at 
once the tragedy of his position and the em- 
barrassment of yours. There was not one hint 
about him of the beggar's emphasis, the out- 
burst of revolting gratitude, the rant and cant, 
the 'God bless you, Kind, Kind gentleman,' 
which insults the smallness of your alms by 
disproportionate vehemence, which is so notably 
false, which would be so unbearable if it were 
true. I am sometimes tempted to suppose this 
reading of the beggar's part, a survival of the 
old days when Shakespeare was intoned upon 
the stage and mourners keened beside the 
death-bed; to think that we cannot now 
accept these strong emotions unless they be 
uttered in the just note of life; nor (save in 
the pulpit) endure these gross conventions. 
They wound us, I am tempted to say, like 
mockery ; the high voice of keening (as it yet 
lingers on) strikes in the face of sorrow like a 
buffet ; and the rant and cant of the staled 
beggar stirs in us a shudder of disgust. But 



Beggars 265 

the fact disproves these amateur opinions. The 
beggar lives by his knowledge of the average 
man. He knows what he is about when he 
bandages his head, and hires and drugs a babe, 
and poisons life with Poor Mary Ann or Long, 
long ago ; he knows what he is about when he 
loads the critical ear and sickens the nice con- 
science with intolerable thanks ; they know 
what they are about, he and his crew, when 
they pervade the slums of cities, ghastly 
parodies of suffering, hateful parodies of 
gratitude. This trade can scarce be called 
an imposition ; it has been so blown upon with 
exposures ; it flaunts its fraudulence so nakedly. 
We pay them as we pay those who show us, 
in huge exaggeration, the monsters of our 
drinking-water; or those who daily predict the 
fall of Britain. We pay them for the pain they 
inflict, pay them, and wince, and hurry on. 
And truly there is nothing that can shake the 
conscience like a beggar's thanks ; and that 
polity in which such protestations can be pur- 
chased for a shilling, seems no scene for an 
honest man. 

Are there, then, we may be asked, no genuine 



266 Beggars 

beggars ? And the answer is, Not one. My 
old soldier was a humbug like the rest; his 
ragged boots were, in the stage phrase, prop- 
erties; whole boots were given him again 
and again, and always gladly accepted; and 
the next day, there he was on the road as 
usual, with toes exposed. His boots were his 
method; they were the man's trade; without 
his boots he would have starved ; he did not 
live by charity, but by appealing to a gross 
taste in the public, which loves the limelight 
on the actor's face, and the toes out of the 
beggar's boots. There is a true poverty, which 
no one sees : a false and merely mimetic 
poverty, which usurps its place and dress, and 
lives and above all drinks, on the fruits of the 
usurpation. The true poverty does not go 
into the streets; the banker may rest assured, 
he has never put a penny in its hand. The 
self-respecting poor beg from each other ; never 
from the rich. To live in the frock-coated 
ranks of life, to hear canting scenes of gratitude 
rehearsed for twopence, a man might suppose 
that giving was a thing gone out of fashion; 
yet it goes forward on a scale so great as to 



Beggars 267 

fill me with surprise. In the houses of the 
working class, all day long there will be a foot 
upon the stair; all day long there will be a 
knocking at the doors ; beggars come, beggars 
go, without stint, hardly with intermission, from 
morning till night ; and meanwhile, in the same 
city and but a few streets off, the castles of the 
rich stand unsummoned. Get the tale of any 
honest tramp, you will find it was always the 
poor who helped him ; get the truth from any 
workman who has met misfortunes, it was 
always next door that he would go for help, or 
only with such exceptions as are said to prove 
a rule; look at the course of the mimetic 
beggar, it is through the poor quarters that he 
trails his passage, showing his bandages to 
every window, piercing even to the attics with 
his nasal song. Here is a remarkable state of 
things in our Christian commonwealths, that 
the poor only should be asked to give. 



268 Beggars 

IV 

There is a pleasant tale of some worthless, 
phrasing Frenchman, who was taxed with 
ingratitude: '// faut savoir garder Vinde- 
pendance du coeurj cried he. I own I feel with 
him. Gratitude without familiarity, gratitude 
otherwise than as a nameless element in a 
friendship, is a thing so near to hatred that 
I do not care to split the difference. Until I 
find a man who is pleased to receive obliga- 
tions, I shall continue to question the tact of 
those who are eager to confer them. What 
an art it is, to give, even to our nearest friends ! 
and what a test of manners, to receive ! How, 
upon either side, we smuggle away the obli- 
gation, blushing for each other ; how bluff and 
dull we make the giver; how hasty, how 
falsely cheerful, the receiver ! And yet an 
act of such difficulty and distress between near 
friends, it is supposed we can perform to a 
total stranger and leave the man transfixed 
with grateful emotions. The last thing you 
can do to a man is to burthen him with an 
obligation, and it is what we propose to begin 



Beggars 269 

with ! But let us not be deceived : unless he 
is totally degraded to his trade, anger jars 
in his inside, and he grates his teeth at our 
gratuity. 

We should wipe two words from our vocabu- 
lary : gratitude and charity. In real life, help 
is given out of friendship, or it is not valued ; 
it is received from the hand of friendship, 
or it is resented. We are all too proud to 
take a naked gift: we must seem to pay it, 
if in nothing else, then with the delights of 
our society. Here, then, is the pitiful fix of 
the rich man; here is that needle's eye in 
which he stuck already in the days of Christ, 
and still sticks to-day, firmer, if possible, than 
ever : that he has the money and lacks the 
love which should make his money acceptable. 
Here and now, just as of old in Palestine, 
he has the rich to dinner, it is with the rich 
that he takes his pleasure : and when his 
turn comes to be charitable, he looks in vain 
for a recipient. His friends are not poor, 
they do not want ; the poor are not his friends, 
they will not take. To whom is he to give ? 
Where to find — note this phrase — the Deserv- 



270 Beggars 

ing Poor ? Charity is (what they call) central- 
ised ; offices are hired ; societies founded, 
with secretaries paid or unpaid : the hunt of 
the Deserving Poor goes merrily forward. 
I think it will take more than a merely human 
secretary to disinter that character. What ! 
a class that is to be in want from no fault 
of its own, and yet greedily eager to receive 
from strangers; and to be quite respectable, 
and at the same time quite devoid of self- 
respect ; and play the most delicate part of 
friendship, and yet never be seen; and wear 
the form of man, and yet fly in the face of all 
the laws of human nature : — and all this, in the 
hope of getting a belly-god Burgess through 
a needle's eye ! O, let him stick, by all means : 
and let his polity tumble in the dust ; and 
let his epitaph and all his literature (of which 
my own works begin to form no inconsiderable 
part) be abolished even from the history of 
man ! For a fool of this monstrosity of dul- 
ness, there can be no salvation : and the fool 
who looked for the elixir of life was an angel 
of reason to the fool who looks for the Deserv- 
ing Poor! 



Beggars 271 



And yet there is one course which the 
unfortunate gentleman may take. He may 
subscribe to pay the taxes. There were the 
true charity, impartial and impersonal, cumber- 
ing none with obligation, helping all. There 
were a destination for loveless gifts; there 
were the way to reach the pocket of the 
deserving poor, and yet save the time of 
secretaries ! But, alas ! there is no colour 
of romance in such a course; and people 
nowhere demand the picturesque so much as 
in their virtues. 



LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN 
WHO PROPOSES TO EMBRACE 
THE CAREER OF ART 

With the agreeable frankness of youth, you 
address me on a point of some practical im- 
portance to yourself and (it is even conceivable) 
of some gravity to the world : Should you or 
should you not become an artist? It is one 
which you must decide entirely for yourself; 
all that I can do is to bring under your notice 
some of the materials of that decision ; and I 
will begin, as I shall probably conclude also, 
by assuring you that all depends on the 
vocation. 

To know what you like is the beginning of 
wisdom and of old age. Youth is wholly ex- 
perimental. The essence and charm of that 
272 



Letter to a Young Gentleman 273 

unquiet and delightful epoch is ignorance of 
self as well as ignorance of life. These two 
unknowns the young man brings together 
again and again, now in the airiest touch, 
now with a bitter hug; now with exquisite 
pleasure, now with cutting pain ; but never 
with indifference, to which he is a total 
stranger, and never with that near kinsman 
of indifference, contentment. If he be a youth 
of dainty senses or a brain easily heated, the 
interest of this series of experiments grows 
upon him out of all proportion to the pleas- 
ure he receives. It is not beauty that he 
loves, nor pleasure that he seeks, though he 
may think so ; his design and his sufficient 
reward is to verify his own existence and 
taste the variety of human fate. To him, 
before the razor-edge of curiosity is dulled, 
all that is not actual living and the hot chase 
of experience wears a face of a disgusting 
dryness difficult to recall in later days ; or if 
there be any exception — and here destiny steps 
in — it is in those moments when, wearied or 
surfeited of the primary activity of the senses, 
he calls up before memory the image of trans- 



274 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

acted pains and pleasures. Thus it is that 
such an one shies from all cut-and-dry pro- 
fessions, and inclines insensibly toward that 
career of art which consists only in the tasting 
and recording of experience. 

This, which is not so much a vocation for 
art as an impatience of all other honest trades, 
frequently exists alone; and so existing, it will 
pass gently away in the course of years. Em- 
phatically, it is not to be regarded ; it is not a 
vocation, but a temptation ; and when your 
father the other day so fiercely and (in my 
view) so properly discouraged your ambition, 
he was recalling not improbably some similar 
passage in his own experience. For the temp- 
tation is perhaps nearly as common as the 
vocation is rare. But again we have vocations 
which are imperfect; we have men whose 
minds are bound up, not so much in any art, 
as in the general ars artium and common base 
of all creative work; who will now dip into 
painting, and now study counterpoint, and anon 
will be inditing a sonnet: all these with equal 
interest, all often with genuine knowledge. 
And of this temper, when it stands alone, I 



Letter to a Young Gentleman 275 

find it difficult to speak ; but I should counsel 
such an one to take to letters, for in literature 
(which drags with so wide a net) all his informa- 
tion may be found some day useful, and if 
he should go on as he has begun, and turn at 
last into the critic, he will have learned to use 
the necessary tools. Lastly we come to those 
vocations which are at once decisive and pre- 
cise ; to the men who are born with the love 
of pigments, the passion of drawing, the gift of 
music, or the impulse to create with words, just 
as other and perhaps the same men are born 
with the love of hunting, or the sea, or horses, 
or the turning-lathe. These are predestined; 
if a man love the labour of any trade, apart 
from any question of success or fame, the gods 
have called him. He may have the general 
vocation too : he may have a taste for all the 
arts, and I think he often has; but the mark 
of his calling is this laborious partiality for 
one, this inextinguishable zest in its technical 
successes, and (perhaps above all) a certain 
candour of mind, to take his very trifling 
enterprise with a gravity that would befit the 
cares of empire, and to think the smallest 



276 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

improvement worth accomplishing at any 
expense of time and industry. The book, 
the statue, the sonata, must be gone upon 
with the unreasoning good faith and the un- 
flagging spirit of children at their play. Is it 
worth doi?ig? — when it shall have occurred to 
any artist to ask himself that question, it is 
implicitly answered in the negative. It does 
not occur to the child as he plays at being a 
pirate on the dining-room sofa, nor to the 
hunter as he pursues his quarry; and the 
candour of the one and the ardour of the 
other should be united in the bosom of the 
artist. 

If you recognise in yourself some such 
decisive taste, there is no room for hesitation : 
follow your bent. And observe (lest I should 
too much discourage you) that the disposition 
does not usually burn so brightly at the first, 
or rather not so constantly. Habit and prac- 
tice sharpen gifts; the necessity of toil grows 
less disgusting, grows even welcome, in the 
course of years; a small taste (if it be only 
genuine) waxes with indulgence into an ex- 
clusive passion. Enough, just now, if you can 



Letter to a Young Gentleman 277 

look back over a fair interval, and see that 
your chosen art has a little more than held its 
own among the thronging interests of youth. 
Time will do the rest, if devotion help it ; and 
soon your every thought will be engrossed in 
that beloved occupation. 

But even with devotion, you may remind 
me, even with unfaltering and delighted 
industry, many thousand artists spend their 
lives, if the result be regarded, utterly in vain : 
a thousand artists, and never one work of art. 
But the vast mass of mankind are incapa- 
ble of doing anything reasonably well, art 
among the rest. The worthless artist would 
not improbably have been a quite incompetent 
baker. And the artist, even if he does not 
amuse the public, amuses himself; so that 
there will always be one man the happier for 
his vigils. This is the practical side of art : its 
inexpugnable fortress for the true practitioner. 
The direct returns — the wages of the trade — 
are small, but the indirect — the wages of the 
life — are incalculably great. No other business 
offers a man his daily bread upon such joyful 
terms. The soldier and the explorer have 



2 j8 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

moments of a worthier excitement, but they 
are purchased by cruel hardships and periods 
of tedium that beggar language. In the life 
of the artist there need be no hour without 
its pleasure. I take the author, with whose 
career I am best acquainted ; and it is true he 
works in a rebellious material, and that the 
act of writing is cramped and trying both to 
the eyes and the temper ; but remark him in his 
study, when matter crowds upon him and words 
are not wanting — in what a continual series 
of small successes time flows by; with what 
a sense of power as of one moving mountains, 
he marshals his petty characters ; with what 
pleasures, both of the ear and eye, he sees his 
airy structure growing on the page; and how 
he labours in a craft to which the whole ma- 
terial of his life is tributary, and which opens 
a door to all his tastes, his loves, his hatreds, 
and his convictions, so that what he writes is 
only what he longed to utter. He may have 
enjoyed many things in this big, tragic play- 
ground of the world; but what shall he have 
enjoyed more fully than a morning of success- 
ful work? Suppose it ill paid: the wonder is 



Letter to a Young Gentleman 279 

it should be paid at all. Other men pay, and 
pay dearly, for pleasures less desirable. 

Nor will the practice of art afford you 
pleasure only; it affords besides an admirable 
training. For the artist works entirely upon 
honour. The public knows little or nothing of 
those merits in the quest of which you are 
condemned to spend the bulk of your en- 
deavours. Merits of design, the merit of first- 
hand energy, the merit of a certain cheap 
accomplishment which a man of the artistic 
temper easily acquires — these they can recog- 
nise, and these they value. But to those more 
exquisite refinements of proficiency and finish, 
which the artist so ardently desires and so 
keenly feels, for which (in the vigorous words 
of Balzac) he must toil ' like a miner buried 
in a landslip,' for which, day after day, he 
recasts and revises and rejects — the gross 
mass of the public must be ever blind. To 
those lost pains, suppose you attain the 
highest pitch of merit, posterity may possibly 
do justice ; suppose, as is so probable, you 
fail by even a hair's breadth of the highest, 
rest certain they shall never be observed. 



280 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

Under the shadow of this cold thought, alone 
in his studio, the artist must preserve from 
day to day his constancy to the ideal. It is 
this which makes his life noble ; it is by this 
that the practice of his craft strengthens and 
matures his character; it is for this that even 
the serious countenance of the great emperor 
was turned approvingly (if only for a moment) 
on the followers of Apollo, and that sternly 
gentle voice bade the artist cherish his art. 

And here there fall two warnings to be 
made. First, if you are to continue to be 
a law to yourself, you must beware of the 
first signs of laziness. This idealism in 
honesty can only be supported by perpetual 
effort ; the standard is easily lowered, the 
artist who says ' // will do, ' is on the down- 
ward path ; three or four pot-boilers are enough 
at times (above all at wrong times) to falsify 
a talent, and by the practice of journalism a 
man runs the risk of becoming wedded to 
cheap finish. This is the danger on the one 
side ; there is not less upon the other. The 
consciousness of how much the artist is (and 
must be) a law to himself, debauches the small 



Letter to a Young Gentleman 281 

heads. Perceiving recondite merits very hard 
to attain, making or swallowing artistic 
formulae, or perhaps falling in love with some 
particular proficiency of his own, many artists 
forget the end of all art : to please. It is 
doubtless tempting to exclaim against the 
ignorant bourgeois ; yet it should not be 
forgotten, it is he who is to pay us, and that 
(surely on the face of it) for services that he 
shall desire to have performed. Here also, if 
properly considered, there is a question of 
transcendental honesty. To give the public 
what they do not want, and yet expect to 
be supported : we have there a strange pre- 
tension, and yet not uncommon, above all with 
painters. The first duty in this world is for 
a man to pay his way ; when that is quite 
accomplished, he may plunge into what 
eccentricity he likes ; but emphatically not 
till then. Till then, he must pay assiduous 
court to the bourgeois who carries the purse. 
And if in the course of these capitulations he 
shall falsify his talent, it can never have been 
a strong one, and he will have preserved a 
better thing than talent — character. Or if he 



282 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

be of a mind so independent that he cannot 
stoop to this necessity, one course is yet open : 
he can desist from art, and follow some 
more manly way of life. 

I speak of a more manly way of life, it is a 
point on which I must be frank. To live by 
a pleasure is not a high calling ; it involves 
patronage, however veiled ; it numbers the 
artist, however ambitious, along with dancing 
girls and billiard markers. The French have a 
romantic evasion for one employment, and call 
its practitioners the Daughters of Joy. The 
artist is of the same family, he is of the Sons 
of Joy, chose his trade to please himself, gains 
his livelihood by pleasing others, and has parted 
with something of the sterner dignity of man. 
Journals but a little while ago declaimed against 
the Tennyson peerage ; and this Son of Joy 
was blamed for condescension when he followed 
the example of Lord Lawrence and Lord 
Cairns and Lord Clyde. The poet was more 
happily inspired ; with a better modesty he 
accepted the honour ; and anonymous journal- 
ists have not yet (if I am to believe them) 
recovered the vicarious disgrace to their profes- 






Letter to a Young Gentleman 283 

sion. When it comes to their turn, these 
gentlemen can do themselves more justice ; and 
I shall be glad to think of it ; for to my bar- 
barian eyesight, even Lord Tennyson looks 
somewhat out of place in that assembly. There 
should be no honours for the artist; he has 
already, in the practice of his art, more than his 
share of the rewards of life; the honours are 
pre-empted for other trades, less agreeable and 
perhaps more useful. 

But the devil in these trades of pleasing is 
to fail to please. In ordinary occupations, a 
man offers to do a certain thing or to produce 
a certain article with a merely conventional 
accomplishment, a design in which (we may 
almost say) it is difficult to fail. But the artist 
steps forth out of the crowd and proposes to 
delight : an impudent design, in which it is 
impossible to fail without odious circumstances. 
The poor Daughter of Joy, carrying her smiles 
and finery quite unregarded through the crowd, 
makes a figure which it is impossible to recall 
without a wounding pity. She is the type of 
the unsuccessful artist. The actor, the dancer, 
and the singer must appear like her in person, 



284 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

and drain publicly the cup of failure. But 
though the rest of us escape this crowning 
bitterness of the pillory, we all court in essence 
the same humiliation. We all profess to be 
able to delight. And how few of us are ! We 
all pledge ourselves to be able to continue to 
delight. And the day will come to each, and 
even to the most admired, when the ardour 
shall have declined and the cunning shall be 
lost, and he shall sit by his deserted booth 
ashamed. Then shall he see himself condemned 
to do work for which he blushes to take pay- 
ment. Then (as if his lot were not already 
cruel) he must lie exposed to the gibes of the 
wreckers of the press, who earn a little bitter 
bread by the condemnation of trash which they 
have not read, and the praise of excellence 
which they cannot understand. 

And observe that this seems almost the 
necessary end at least of writers. Les Blancs et 
les Bleus (for instance) is of an order of merit 
very different from Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ; 
and if any gentleman can bear to spy upon 
the nakedness of Castle Dangerous, his name 
I think is Ham: let it be enough for the rest 



Letter to a Young Gentleman 285 

of us to read of it (not without tears) in the 
pages of Lockhart. Thus in old age, when 
occupation and comfort are most needful, the 
writer must lay aside at once his pastime and 
his breadwinner. The painter indeed, if he 
succeed at all in engaging the attention of the 
public, gains great sums and can stand to his 
easel until a great age without dishonourable 
failure. The writer has the double misfortune 
to be ill-paid while he can work, and to be in- 
capable of working when he is old. It is thus 
a way of life which conducts directly to a false 
position. 

For the writer (in spite of notorious examples 
to the contrary) must look to be ill-paid. 
Tennyson and Montepin make handsome liveli- 
hoods ; but we cannot all hope to be Tennyson, 
and we do not all perhaps desire to be Monte- 
pin. If you adopt an art to be your trade, 
weed your mind at the outset of all desire of 
money. What you may decently expect, if 
you have some talent and much industry, is 
such an income as a clerk will earn with a tenth 
or perhaps a twentieth of your nervous output. 
Nor have you the right to look for more; in 



286 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

the wages of the life, not in the wages of the 
trade, lies your reward; the work is here the 
wages. It will be seen I have little sympathy 
with the common lamentations of the artist 
class. Perhaps they do not remember the hire 
of the field labourer; or do they think no 
parallel will lie ? Perhaps they have never 
observed what is the retiring allowance of a 
field officer ; or do they suppose their contribu- 
tions to the arts of pleasing more important 
than the services of a colonel? Perhaps they 
forget on how little Millet was content to live ; 
or do they think, because they have less genius, 
they stand excused from the display of equal 
virtues? But upon one point there should be 
no dubiety : if a man be not frugal, he has no 
business in the arts. If he be not frugal, he 
steers directly for that last tragic scene of le 
vieux saltimbaiique ; if he be not frugal, he will 
find it hard to continue to be honest. Some 
day, when the butcher is knocking at the door, 
he may be tempted, he may be obliged, to turn 
out and sell a slovenly piece of work. If the 
obligation shall have arisen through no wanton- 
ness of his own, he is even to be commended ; 



Letter to a Young Gentleman 287 

for words cannot describe how far more neces- 
sary it is that a man should support his family, 
than that he should attain to — or preserve — 
distinction in the arts. But if the pressure 
comes through his own fault, he has stolen, and 
stolen under trust, and stolen (which is the 
worst of all) in such a way that no law can 
reach him. 

And now you may perhaps ask me, if the 
debutant artist is to have no thought of money, 
and if (as is implied) he is to expect no honours 
from the State, he may not at least look forward 
to the delights of popularity? Praise, you will 
tell me, is a savoury dish. And in so far as you 
may mean the countenance of other artists, you 
would put your finger on one of the most 
essential and enduring pleasures of the career 
of art. But in so far as you should have an 
eye to the commendations of the public or 
the notice of the newspapers, be sure you would 
but be cherishing a dream. It is true that in 
certain esoteric journals the author (for instance) 
is duly criticised, and that he is often praised a 
great deal more than he deserves, sometimes for 
qualities which he prided himself on eschewing, 



288 Letter to a Young Gentleman 

and sometimes by ladies and gentlemen who 
have denied themselves the privilege of reading 
his work. But if a man be sensitive to this 
wild praise, we must suppose him equally alive 
to that which often accompanies and always 
follows it — wild ridicule. A man may have 
done well for years, and then he may fail ; he 
will hear of his failure. Or he may have done 
well for years, and still do well, but the critics 
may have tired of praising him, or there may 
have sprung up some new idol of the instant, 
some ' dust a little gilt,' to whom they now pre- 
fer to offer sacrifice. Here is the obverse and 
the reverse of that empty and ugly thing called 
popularity. Will any man suppose it worth the 
gaining ? 



XI 

PULVIS ET UMBRA 

We look for some reward of our endeavours 
and are disappointed; not success, not happi- 
ness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our 
ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are 
invincible, our virtues barren ; the battle goes 
sore against us to the going down of the sun. 
The canting moralist tells us of right and 
wrong ; and we look abroad, even on the face 
of our small earth, and find them change with 
every climate, and no country where some 
action is not honoured for a virtue and none 
where it is not branded for a vice; and we 
look in our experience, and find no vital con- 
gruity in the wisest rules, but at the best a 
municipal fitness. It is not strange if we are 
tempted to despair of good. We ask too much. 

Our religions and moralities have been trimmed 

289 



290 Pulvis et Umbra 

to flatter us, till they are all emasculate and 
sentimentalised, and only please and weaken. 
Truth is of a rougher strain. In the harsh face 
of life, faith can read a bracing gospel. The 
human race is a thing more ancient than the 
ten commandments ; and the bones and revolu- 
tions of the Kosmos, in whose joints we are but 
moss and fungus, more ancient still. 



Of the Kosmos in the last resort, science 
reports many doubtful things and all of them 
appalling. There seems no substance to this 
solid globe on which we stamp : nothing but 
symbols and ratios. Symbols and ratios carry 
us and bring us forth and beat us down ; gravity 
that swings the incommensurable suns and 
worlds through space, is but a figment varying 
inversely as the squares of distances ; and the 
suns and worlds themselves, imponderable fig- 
ures of abstraction, NH 3 and H 2 0. Considera- 
tion dares not dwell upon this view ; that way 
madness lies; science carries us into zones of 
speculation, where there is no habitable city for 
the mind of man. 



Pulvis et Umbra 291 

But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, 
as our senses give it us. We behold space sown 
with rotatory islands, suns and worlds and the 
shards and wrecks of systems : some, like the 
sun, still blazing ; some rotting, like the earth ; 
others, like the moon, stable in desolation. All 
of these we take to be made of something we 
call matter : a thing which no analysis can help 
us to conceive; to whose incredible properties 
no familiarity can reconcile our minds. This 
stuff, when not purified by the lustration of 
fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life ; 
seized through all its atoms with a pediculous 
malady; swelling in tumours that become in- 
dependent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent 
prodigy) locomotory ; one splitting into millions, 
millions cohering into one, as the malady pro- 
ceeds through varying stages. This vital 
putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, 
yet strikes us with occasional disgust, and the 
profusion of worms in a piece of ancient turf, 
or the air of a marsh darkened with insects, 
will sometimes check our breathing so that we 
aspire for cleaner places. But none is clean: 
the moving sand is infected with lice ; the pure 



292 Pulvis et Umbra 

spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a 
mere issue of worms ; even in the hard rock the 
crystal is forming. 

In two main shapes this eruption covers the 
countenance of the earth : the animal and the 
vegetable : one in some degree the inversion of 
the other: the second rooted to the spot; the 
first coming detached out of its natal mud, and 
scurrying abroad with the myriad feet of insects 
or towering into the heavens on the wings of 
birds : a thing so inconceivable that, if it be 
well considered, the heart stops. To what 
passes with the anchored vermin, we have little 
clue: doubtless they have their joys and sor- 
rows, their delights and killing agonies : it 
appears not how. But of the locomotory, to 
which we ourselves belong, we can tell more. 
These share with us a thousand miracles : the 
miracles of sight, of hearing, of the projection 
of sound, things that bridge space; the miracles 
of memory and reason, by which the present is 
conceived, and when it is gone, its image kept 
living in the brains of man and brute ; the 
miracle of reproduction, with its imperious 
desires and staggering consequences. And 



Pulvis et Umbra 293 

to put the last touch upon this mountain mass 
of the revolting and the inconceivable, all these 
prey upon each other, lives tearing other lives 
in pieces, cramming them inside themselves, 
and by that summary process, growing fat : the 
vegetarian, the whale, perhaps the tree, not less 
than the lion of the desert ; for the vegetarian 
is only the eater of the dumb. 

Meanwhile our rotatory island loaded with 
predatory life, and more drenched with blood, 
both animal and vegetable, than ever mutinied 
ship, scuds through space with unimaginable 
speed, and turns alternate cheeks to the re- 
verberation of a blazing world, ninety million 
miles away. 



II 

What a monstrous spectre is this man, the 
disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate 
feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, 
feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies 
of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, 
fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his 
face ; a thing to set children screaming ; — 



294 Pulvis et Umbra 

and yet looked at nearlier, known as his fellows 
know him, how surprising are his attributes ! 
Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so 
many hardships, filled with desires so incom- 
mensurate and so inconsistent, savagely sur- 
rounded, savagely descended, irremediably 
condemned to prey upon his fellow lives : 
who should have blamed him had he been of 
a piece with his destiny and a being merely 
barbarous ? And we look and behold him 
instead filled with imperfect virtues : infinitely 
childish, often admirably valiant, often touch- 
ingly kind ; sitting down, amidst his momentary 
life, to debate of right and wrong and the attri- 
butes of the deity; rising up to do battle for 
an egg or die for an idea ; singling out his 
friends and his mate with cordial affection; 
bringing forth in pain, rearing with long- 
suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the 
heart of his mystery, we find in him one 
thought, strange to the point of lunacy: the 
thought of duty ; the thought of something 
owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his 
God : an ideal of decency, to which he would 
rise if it were possible ; a limit of shame, below 



Pulvis et Umbra 295 

which, if it be possible, he will not stoop. The 
design in most men is one of conformity ; here 
and there, in picked natures, it transcends itself 
and soars on the other side, arming martyrs 
with independence ; but in all, in their degrees, 
it is a bosom thought : — Not in man alone, for 
we trace it in dogs and cats whom we know 
fairly well, and doubtless some similar point of 
honour sways the elephant, the oyster, and the 
louse, of whom we know so little : — But in 
man, at least, it sways with so complete an 
empire that merely selfish things come second, 
even with the selfish : that appetites are 
starved, fears are conquered, pains supported ; 
that almost the dullest shrinks from the reproof 
of a glance, although it were a child's ; and all 
but the most cowardly stand amid the risks 
of war; and the more noble, having strongly 
conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront 
and embrace death. Strange enough if, with 
their singular origin and perverted practice, 
they think they are to be rewarded in some 
future life : stranger still, if they are persuaded 
of the contrary, and think this blow, which 
they solicit, will strike them senseless for 



296 Pulvis et Umbra 

eternity. I shall be reminded what a tragedy 
of misconception and misconduct man at large 
presents : of organised injustice, cowardly vio- 
lence and treacherous crime ; and of the damn- 
ing imperfections of the best. They cannot 
be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked 
for failure in his efforts to do right. But 
where the best consistently miscarry, how ten- 
fold more remarkable that all should continue 
to strive ; and surely we should find it both 
touching and inspiriting, that in a field from 
which success is banished, our race should not 
cease to labour. 

If the first view of this creature, stalking 
in his rotatory isle, be a thing to shake the 
courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight, 
he startles us with an admiring wonder. It 
matters not where we look, under what climate 
we observe him, in what stage of society, in 
what depth of ignorance, burthened with what 
erroneous morality ; by camp-fires in Assi- 
niboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the 
wind plucking his blanket, as he sits, passing 
the ceremonial calumet and uttering his grave 
opinions like a Roman senator ; in ships at sea, 



Pulvis et Umbra 297 

a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, 
his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and a 
bedizened truil who sells herself to rob him, and 
he for all that simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly 
like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, 
for others; in the slums of cities, moving 
among indifferent millions to mechanical em- 
ployments, without hope of change in the 
future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, 
and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his 
lights, kind to his neighbours, tempted per- 
haps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps 
long-suffering with the drunken wife that ruins 
him ; in India (a woman this time) kneeling 
with broken cries and streaming tears, as she 
drowns her child in the sacred river; in the 
brothel, the discard of society, living mainly 
on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, a 
thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here 
keeping the point of honour and the touch of 
pity, often repaying the world's scorn with 
service, often standing firm upon a scruple, 
and at a certain cost, rejecting riches : — 
everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, 
everywhere some decency of thought and 



298 Pulvis et Umbra 

carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's in- 
effectual goodness : — ah ! if I could show 
you this ! if I could show you these men 
and women, all the world over, in every 
stage of history, under every abuse of error, 
under every circumstance of failure, without 
hope, without help, without thanks, still ob- 
scurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still 
clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to 
some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their 
souls ! They may seek to escape, and yet 
they cannot ; it is not alone their privilege 
and glory, but their doom ; they are con- 
demned to some nobility; all their lives long, 
the desire of good is at their heels, the im- 
placable hunter. 

Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the 
most strange and consoling : that this ennobled 
lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the dust, 
this inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should 
yet deny himself his rare delights, and add to 
his frequent pains, and live for an ideal, however 
misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A 
new doctrine, received with screams a little 
while ago by canting moralists, and still not 



Pulvis et Umbra 299 

properly worked into the body of our thoughts, 
lights us a step farther into the heart of this 
rough but noble universe. For nowadays the 
pride of man denies in vain his kinship with 
the original dust. He stands no longer like a 
thing apart. Close at his heels we see the dog, 
prince of another genus: and in him too, we 
see dumbly testified the same cultus of an 
unattainable ideal, the same constancy in 
failure. Does it stop with the dog ? We look 
at our feet where the ground is blackened with 
the swarming ant: a creature so small, so far 
from us in the hierarchy of brutes, that we can 
scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings ; 
and here also, in his ordered polities and rigor- 
ous justice, we see confessed the law of duty 
and the fact of individual sin. Does it stop, 
then, with the ant ? Rather this desire of well- 
doing and this doom of frailty run through all 
the grades of life : rather is this earth, from the 
frosty top of Everest to the next margin of the 
internal fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues and 
one temple of pious tears and perseverance. 
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth 
together. It is the common and the god-like 



300 Pulvis et Umbra 

law of life. The browsers, the biters, the 
barkers, the hairy coats of field and forest, the 
squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed creeper 
in the dust, as they share with us the gift of 
life, share with us the love of an ideal : strive 
like us — like us are tempted to grow weary of 
the struggle — to do well ; like us receive at 
times unmerited refreshment, visitings of sup- 
port, returns of courage; and are condemned 
like us to be crucified between that double law 
of the members and the will. Are they like us, 
I wonder, in the timid hope of some reward, 
some sugar with the drug ? do they, too, stand 
aghast at unrewarded virtues, at the sufferings 
of those whom, in our partiality, we take to be 
just, and the prosperity of such as, in our blind- 
ness, we call wicked ? It may be, and yet God 
knows what they should look for. Even while 
they look, even while they repent, the foot of 
man treads them by thousands in the dust, the 
yelping hounds burst upon their trail, the bullet 
speeds, the knives are heating in the den of the 
vivisectionist ; or the dew falls, and the genera- 
tion of a day is blotted out. For these are 
creatures, compared with whom our weakness is 



Pulvis et Umbra 301 

strength, our ignorance wisdom, our brief span 
eternity. 

And as we dwell, we living things, in our 
isle of terror and under the imminent hand of 
death, God forbid it should be man the erected, 
the reasoner, the wise in his own eyes — God 
forbid it should be man that wearies in well- 
doing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or 
utters the language of complaint. Let it be 
enough for faith, that the whole creation groans 
in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable 
constancy : Surely not all in vain. 



XII 
A CHRISTMAS SERMON 

By the time this paper appears, I shall have 
been talking for twelve months ; x and it is 
thought I should take my leave in a formal and 
seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is 
rare, and death-bed sayings have not often hit 
the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit 
and sceptic, a man whose life had been one 
long lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going 
comrade, a manoeuvring king — remembered and 
embodied all his wit and scepticism along with 
more than his usual good humour in the famous 
' I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscion- 
able time a-dying.' 

I 

An unconscionable time a-dying — there is 
the picture (' I am afraid, gentlemen,') of your 

1 i.e. in the pages of So'ibners Magazine (1888). 
302 









A Christmas Sermon 303 

life and of mine. The sands run out, and the 
hours are 'numbered and imputed,' and the 
days go by ; and when the last of these finds 
us, we have been a long time dying, and what 
else ? The very length is something, if we reach 
that hour of separation undishonoured ; and to 
have lived at all is doubtless (in the soldierly 
expression) to have served. There is a tale in 
Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied in the 
German wilderness ; of how they mobbed Ger- 
manicus, clamouring to go home ; and of how, 
seizing their general's hand, these old, war-worn 
exiles passed his finger along their toothless 
gums. Sunt lacrymce remm : this was the most 
eloquent of the songs of Simeon. And when a 
man has lived to a fair age, he bears his marks 
of service. He may have never been remarked 
upon the breach at the head of the army; at 
least he shall have lost his teeth on the camp 
bread. 

The idealism of serious people in this age 
of ours is of a noble character. It never 
seems to them that they have served enough ; 
they have a fine impatience of their virtues. 
It were perhaps more modest to be singly 



304 A Christmas Sermon 

thankful that we are no worse. It is not only 
our enemies, those desperate characters — it is 
we ourselves who know not what we do; — 
thence springs the glimmering hope that 
perhaps we do better than we think: that to 
scramble through this random business with 
hands reasonably clean, to have played the 
part of a man or woman with some reasonable 
fulness, to have often resisted the diabolic, and 
at the end to be still resisting it, is for the 
poor human soldier to have done right well. 
To ask to see some fruit of our endeavour is 
but a transcendental way of serving for reward ; 
and what we take to be contempt of self is only 
greed of hire. 

And again if we require so much of our- 
selves, shall we not require much of others? 
If we do not genially judge our own deficien- 
cies, is it not to be feared we shall be even 
stern to the trespasses of others ? And he who 
(looking back upon his own life) can see no 
more than that he has been unconscionably 
long a-dying, will he not be tempted to think 
his neighbour unconscionably long of getting 
hanged ? It is probable that nearly all who 



A Christmas Sermon 305 

think of conduct at all, think of it too much ; 
it is certain we all think too much of sin. We 
are not damned for doing wrong, but for not 
doing right ; Christ would never hear of 
negative morality; thou shalt was ever his 
word, with which he superseded thou shalt not. 
To make our idea of morality centre on for- 
bidden acts is to defile the imagination and to 
introduce into our judgments of our fellow-men 
a secret element of gusto. If a thing is wrong 
for us, we should not dwell upon the thought 
of it ; or we shall soon dwell upon it with 
inverted pleasure. If we cannot drive it from 
our minds — one thing of two : either our 
creed is in the wrong and we must more in- 
dulgently remodel it ; or else, if our morality 
be in the right, we are criminal lunatics and 
should place our persons in restraint. A mark 
of such unwholesomely divided minds is the 
passion for interference with others : the Fox 
without the Tail was of this breed, but had 
(if his biographer is to be trusted) a certain 
antique civility now out of date. A man may 
have a flaw, a weakness, that unfits him for 
the duties of life, that spoils his temper, that 



306 A Christmas Sermon 

threatens his integrity, or that betrays him into 
cruelty. It has to be conquered; but it must 
never be suffered to engross his thoughts. 
The true duties lie all upon the farther side, 
and must be attended to with a whole mind so 
soon as this preliminary clearing of the decks 
has been effected. In order that he may be 
kind and honest, it may be needful he should 
become a total abstainer; let him become so 
then, and the next day let him forget the 
circumstance. Trying to be kind and honest 
will require all his thoughts ; a mortified 
appetite is never a wise companion ; in 
so far as he has had to mortify an appetite, 
he will still be the worse man; and of such 
an one a great deal of cheerfulness will be 
required in judging life, and a great deal of 
humility in judging others. 

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction 
with our life's endeavour springs in some 
degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, 
because we do not recognise the height of 
those we have. Trying to be kind and honest 
seems an affair too simple and too incon- 
sequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould ; 



A Christmas Sermon 307 

we had rather set ourselves to something bold, 
arduous, and conclusive ; we had rather found 
a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand 
or mortify an appetite. But the task before 
us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is 
rather one of microscopic fineness, and the 
heroism required is that of patience. There 
is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life ; each 
must be smilingly unravelled. 

To be honest, to be kind — to earn a little 
and to spend a little less, to make upon the 
whole a family happier for his presence, to 
renounce when that shall be necessary and 
not be embittered, to keep a few friends but 
these without capitulation — above all, on the 
same grim condition, to keep friends with 
himself — here is a task for all that a man has 
of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious 
soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful 
spirit who should look in such an enterprise to 
be successful. There is indeed one element in 
human destiny that not blindness itself can 
controvert: whatever else we are intended to 
do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is 
the fate allotted. It is so in every art and 



308 A Christmas Sermon 

study; it is so above all in the continent art 
of living well. Here is a pleasant thought for 
the year's end or for the end of life : Only self- 
deception will be satisfied, and there need be 
no despair for the despairer. 



II 



But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of 
another year, moving us to thoughts of self- 
examination : it is a season, from all its associa- 
tions, whether domestic or religious, suggesting 
thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied with his 
endeavours is a man tempted to sadness. And 
in the midst of the winter, when his life runs 
lowest and he is reminded of the empty chairs 
of his beloved, it is well he should be condemned 
to this fashion of the smiling face. Noble dis- 
appointment, noble self-denial are not to be 
admired, not even to be pardoned, if they bring 
bitterness. It is one thing to enter the kingdom 
of heaven maim ; another to maim yourself and 
stay without. And the kingdom of heaven is 
of the childlike, of those who are easy to please, 



A Christmas Sermon 309 

who love and who give pleasure. Mighty men 
of their hands, the smiters and the builders and 
the judges, have lived long and done sternly and 
yet preserved this lovely character ; and among 
our carpet interests and twopenny concerns, 
the shame were indelible if we should lose it. 
Gentleness and cheerfulness, these come before 
all morality ; they are the perfect duties. And 
it is the trouble with moral men that they 
have neither one nor other. It was the moral 
man, the Pharisee, whom Christ could not away 
with. If your morals make you dreary, depend 
upon it they are wrong. I do not say 'give 
them up,' for they may be all you have ; but 
conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil 
the lives of better and simpler people. 

A strange temptation attends upon man : 
to keep his eye on pleasures, even when he will 
not share in them ; to aim all his morals against 
them. This very year a lady (singular icono- 
clast !) proclaimed a crusade against dolls ; and 
the racy sermon against lust is a feature of the 
age. I venture to call such moralists insincere. 
At any excess or perversion of a natural 
appetite, their lyre sounds of itself with relish- 



310 A Christmas Sermon 

ing denunciations ; but for all displays of the 
truly diabolic — envy, malice, the mean lie, the 
mean silence, the calumnious truth, the back- 
biter, the petty tyrant, the peevish poisoner of 
family life — their standard is quite different. 
These are wrong, they will admit, yet somehow 
not so wrong ; there is no zeal in their assault 
on them, no secret element of gusto warms up 
the sermon ; it is for things not wrong in them- 
selves that they reserve the choicest of their 
indignation. A man may naturally disclaim 
all moral kinship with the Reverend Mr. Zola 
or the hobgoblin old lady of the dolls ; for 
these are gross and naked instances. And yet 
in each of us some similar element resides. The 
sight of a pleasure in which we cannot or else 
will not share moves us to a particular im- 
patience. It may be because we are envious, or 
because we are sad, or because we dislike noise 
and romping — being so refined, or because — 
being so philosophic — we have an overweighing 
sense of life's gravity : at least, as we go on in 
years, we are all tempted to frown upon our 
neighbour's pleasures. People are nowadays 
so fond of resisting temptations ; here is one to 



A Christmas Sermon 311 

be resisted. They are fond of self-denial ; 
here is a propensity that cannot be too per- 
emptorily denied. There is an idea abroad 
among moral people that they should make 
their neighbours good. One person I have to 
make good : myself. But my duty to my 
neighbour is much more nearly expressed by 
saying that I have to make him happy — if 
I may. 



Ill 

Happiness and goodness, according to cant- 
ing moralists, stand in the relation of effect and 
cause. There was never anything less proved 
or less probable : our happiness is never in our 
own hands ; we inherit our constitution ; we stand 
buffet among friends and enemies ; we may be 
so built as to feel a sneer or an aspersion with 
unusual keenness, and so circumstanced as to 
be unusually exposed to them ; we may have 
nerves very sensitive to pain, and be afflicted 
with a disease very painful. Virtue will not 
help us, and it is not meant to help us. It is 
not even its own reward, except for the self- 



312 A Christmas Sermon 

centred and — I had almost said — the unam- 
iable. No man can pacify his conscience ; if 
quiet be what he want, he shall do better to let 
that organ perish from disuse. And to avoid the 
penalties of the law, and the minor capitis dimi- 
nutio of social ostracism, is an affair of wisdom 
— of cunning, if you will — and not of virtue. 

In his own life, then, a man is not to expect 
happiness, only to profit by it gladly when it 
shall arise ; he is on duty here ; he knows not 
how or why, and does not need to know ; he 
knows not for what hire, and must not ask. 
Somehow or other, though he does not know 
what goodness is, he must try to be good; 
somehow or other, though he cannot tell what 
will do it, he must try to give happiness to 
others. And no doubt there comes in here a 
frequent clash of duties. How far is he to 
make his neighbour happy ? How far must he 
respect that smiling face, so easy to cloud, so 
hard to brighten again ? And how far, on the 
other side, is he bound to be his brother's 
keeper and the prophet of his own morality ? 
How far must he resent evil ? 

The difficulty is that we have little guid- 



A Christmas Sermon 313 

ance ; Christ's sayings on the point being hard 
to reconcile with each other, and (the most of 
them) hard to accept. But the truth of his 
teaching would seem to be this : in our own 
person and fortune, we should be ready to 
accept and to pardon all ; it is our cheek we 
are to turn, our coat that we are to give away 
to the man who has taken our cloak. But 
when another's face is buffeted, perhaps a little 
of the lion will become us best. That we are 
to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is 
not conceivable and surely not desirable. Re- 
venge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice ; its 
judgments at least are delivered by an insane 
judge ; and in our own quarrel we can see 
nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in 
the quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more 
bold. One person's happiness is as sacred as 
another's ; when we cannot defend both, let us 
defend one with a stout heart. It is only in so 
far as we are doing this, that we have any right 
to interfere : the defence of B is our only 
ground of action against A. A has as good a 
right to go to the devil, as we to go to glory ; 
and neither knows what he does. 



314 A Christmas Sermon 

The truth is that all these interventions and 
denunciations and militant mongerings of moral 
half-truths, though they be sometimes needful, 
though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong 
to an inferior grade of duties. Ill-temper and 
envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious 
disguises ; this is the playground of inverted 
lusts. With a little more patience and a little 
less temper, a gentler and wiser method might 
be found in almost every case ; and the knot 
that we cut by some fine heady quarrel-scene in 
private life, or, in public affairs, by some de- 
nunciatory act against what we are pleased to 
call our neighbour's vices, might yet have been 
unwoven by the hand of sympathy. 



IV 



To look back upon the past year, and see 
how little we have striven and to what small 
purpose ; and how often we have been cowardly 
and hung back, or temerarious and rushed un- 
wisely in ; and how every day and all day long 
we have transgressed the law of kindness ; — it 



A Christmas Sermon 315 

may seem a paradox, but in the bitterness of 
these discoveries, a certain consolation resides. 
Life is not designed to minister to a man's 
vanity. He goes upon his long business most 
of the time with a hanging head, and all the 
time like a blind child. Full of rewards and 
pleasures as it is — so that to see the day break 
or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear 
the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him 
with surprising joys — this world is yet for him 
no abiding city. Friendships fall through, 
health fails, weariness assails him ; year after 
year, he must thumb the hardly varying record 
of his own weakness and folly. It is a friendly 
process of detachment. When the time comes 
that he should go, there need be few illusions 
left about himself. Here lies one ivJw meant 
welly tried a little, failed much : — surely that 
may be his epitaph, of which he need not be 
ashamed. Nor will he complain at the summons 
which calls a defeated soldier from the field : 
defeated, ay, if he were Paul or Marcus Aurelius ! 
— but if there is still one inch of fight in his old 
spirit, undishonoured. The faith which sustained 
him in his life-long blindness and life-long 



316 A Christmas Sermon 

disappointment will scarce even be required in 
this last formality of laying down his arms. 
Give him a march with his old bones ; there, 
out of the glorious sun-coloured earth, out of 
the day and the dust and the ecstasy — there 
goes another Faithful Failure ! 

From a recent book of verse, where there is 
more than one such beautiful and manly poem, 
I take this memorial piece : it says better than 
I can, what I love to think ; let it be our 
parting word. 

* A late lark twitters from the quiet skies ; 
And from the west, 
Where the sun, his day's work ended, 
Lingers as in content, 
There falls on the old, gray city 
An influence luminous and serene, 
A shining peace. 

' The smoke ascends 
In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires 
Shine, and are changed. In the valley 
Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, 
Closing his benediction. 
Sinks, and the darkening air 
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night — 
Night, with her train of stars 
And her great gift of sleep. 



A Christmas Sernion 317 

1 So be my passing ! 

My task accomplished and the long day done, 
My wages taken, and in my heart 
Some late lark singing, 
Let me be gathered to the quiet west, 
The sundown splendid and serene, 
Death.' 1 



1 From A Book of Verses by William Ernest Henley. 
D. Nutt, 1888. 

[1888.3 






THE WORKS OF 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



The following volumes, i2mo, red cloth, 24 volumes, 
in a box, $30.00. 



In the South Seas. 

With Map. i2mo, $1.50. 
This volume is made up of selections from the interesting sketches contributed 
to periodicals by Mr. Stevenson, narrating his experiences and observations in the 
Marquesas (the scene of Melville's " Typee,"), Paumotus, and the Gilbert Islands, 
gathered in the course of two cruises on the yacht " Casco " (1888) and the 
schooner " Equator" (1889). 

Weir of Hermiston. 

i2mo, $1.50. 
" That splendid tragic fragment." — Henry James. 

" Surely no son of Scotland has died, leaving with his last breath a worthier 
tribute to the land he loved.' 1 — Sidney Coi.vin. 

Poems and Ballads. 

i2mo, $1.50. 
Comprising all the poems contained in "A Child's Garden of Verses," 
" Ballads," " Underwoods," and, in addition, over forty pieces of verse written 
since the publication of those volumes. 

Kidnapped. 

Being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the year 1751. 
With 16 full-page illustrations by William Hole. i2mo, $1.50. 

" Mr. Stevenson has never appeared to greater advantage than in ' Kidnapped.' 
No better book of its kind has ever been written." — The Nation, 

David Balfour. 

Being Memoirs of his Adventures at Home and Abroad. i2mo, $1.50. 

" Surely the rarest and noblest work of fiction in the English language produced 
in the year." — New York Times. 

" Nothing better in the field of historical fiction has been produced since Scott." 

— Philadelphia Telegraph. 

Treasure island. 

A Story of the Spanish Main. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.00. 

" Buried treasure is one of the very foundations of romance. . . . This is 
the theory on which Mr. Stevenson has written ' Treasure Island.' Primarily it is 
a book for boys, but it is a book which will be delightful to all grown men who 
have the sentiment of treasure hunting. . . . Like all Mr. Stevenson's good 
work, it is touched with genius. ... A masterpiece of narrative." 

— The Saturday Reviexv. 

The Master of Ballantrae. 

A Winter's Tale. With 10 full-page illustrations by William Hole. 
121110, $1.50. 

" We have here a fresh and striking example of Mr. Stevenson's remarkable 
intellectual versatility and flexibility. It is a fine novel, realistic and romantic by 
turns, marked by rare skill of draughtmanship and vigor of imagination, au honor 

the author and a credi- i.o literature." — Neio Ynrfr Tribune 



THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

The Wrecker. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. With 12 
full-page illustrations by William Hole and W. L. Metcalf. 
i2mo, $1.50. 
" It seems much the most enticing romance at present before the world." 

— Andrew Lang. 
" A stirring story, full of romantic incident, shifting scene, and dash and go. 1 ' 

— Hartford Courant. 

Prince Otto. 

A Romance. i2mo, $1.00. 

" A graceful and unusual romance, full of surprises, full of that individuality 
which is so charming in every page this author has published, and so unhackneyed 
that one knows not what to expect from any one paragraph to the next." 

— Boston Courier. 

The Merry Men, 

And Other Tales and Fables, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

i2mo, $1.25. 

" Everything in the collection is worthy of its remarkable author." 

— The Independent. 

"There are intensely dramatic scenes which sustain the interest of the reader, 
and a freshness, a novelty of plot which convince him that all the stories have not 
yet 'been told. 1 " — The Churchman. 

The Black Arrow. 

A Tale of the Two Roses. Illustrated by Will H. Low and Alfred 
Brennan. i2mo, $1.25. 

" It has all the good qualities of his other stories — their invention, their spirit 
and their charming English. The hand that wrote ' Kidnapped' is visible in its 
stirring pages." — R. H. Stoddard. 

" The story is full of the atmosphere of adventure, and is one of the strongest 
pieces of romantic writing ever done by Mr. Stevenson."— The Boston Times. 

New Arabian Nights. 

i2mo, $1.25. 
" There is something in his work which engages and fixes the attention from 
the first page to the last, which shapes itself before the mind's eye while reading, 
and which refuses to be forgotten long after the book has been put away." 

— R. H. Stoddard. 

The Dynamiter. 

More New Arabian Nights. By Robert Louis Stevenson and 
Mrs. Stevenson. i2mo, $1.25. 

" There is no writer in the English language to-day who can alternately touch 
the springs of tears and laughter as does this man, who weaves as delicious fancies 
as ever passed through the brain." — Philadelphia Times. 

Island Nights* Entertainments. 

Illustrated. i2mo, $1.25. 

" The book will be reckoned among the finest of Mr. Stevenson's works. The 
art of it is so nearly perfect that it seems spontaneous, and the matter is absolutely 
unique." — Boston Beacon. 

The Wrong Box. 

By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. i2mo, $1.25. 

" It brings out more strongly than any of Mr. Stevenson's preceding works his 
facile wit and irresistible humor." — Chicago 'Tribune. 

" As a work of imagination it ecuials any that Mr. Stevenson has ever written." 

—Philadelphia Bulletin. 






THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN SO AT 

Virginibus Puerisque, 

And Other Papers. i2mo, $1.25. 

" Avowedly the book of a young man taking account of life from the starting 
point. There is a great deal in it which is individual, suggestive, and direct from 
life. There are sayings about Truth of Intercourse which penetrate a long way. 
There are passages concerning youth which probe to the quick some of its ailments 
and errors."— Atlantic Monthly. 

Memories and Portraits. 

i2mo, $1.25. 

" The grace and delicacy, the just artistic instinct, the curious aptness of phrase 
which distinguish these essays, can be fully appreciated only by a reader who loves 
to go back to them again and again after a first perusal." ' —Lippincotf 's Magazine^ 

Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin. 

i2mo, $1.25. 

" The glimpses that we get of Mr. Stevenson himself in this book are charming 
and add greatly to its edifying and entertaining character. The style of the nar- 
rative is original, lucid, and spirited." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

Familiar Studies of Men and Books. 

i2mo, $1.25. 

Contents : Victor Hugo's Romances, Some Aspects of Robert Burns, Walt 
Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Yoshida Torajiro, Francois Villon, Charles of 
Orleans, Samuel Pepys, John Knox, and Women. 

An Inland Voyage. 

i2mo, $1.00. 

" Mr. Stevenson does not make canoeing itself his main theme, but delights in 
charming bits of description that, in their close attention to picturesque detail, 
remind one of the work of a skilled ' genre ' painter. Nor does he hesitate .... 
to indulge in a strain of gently humorous reflection that furnishes some of the 
pleasantest passages of the book." — Good Literature. 

Travels with a Donkey 

In the Cevennes. i2mo, $1.00. 

" The author sees everything with the eye of a philosopher. He has a steady 
flow of humor that is as apparently spontaneous as a mountain brook, and he 
views a landscape or a human figure, not only as a tourist seeking subjects for a 
book, but as aruartist to whom the slightest line or tint carries a definite impres- 
sion." — Boston Courier. 

The Silverado Squatters. 

With a frontispiece by Walter Crane. i2mo, $1.00. 

" The interest of the book centres in graphic style and keen observation of the 
author. He has the power of describing places and characters with such vividness 
that you seem to have made personal acquaintance with both." — N. Y, World. 

Across the Plains. 

With Other Memories and Essays. i2mo, $1.25. 

" The book sets us again to wondering at the facility with which Mr. Stevenson 
makes phrases and builds paragraphs ; moreover, we renew our admiration for a 
style as subtle as ether and as brilliant as fire opal." — The Independent. 

A Foot=Note to History. 

Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. i2mo, $1.50. 

"A story well worth reading. We have first a description of the curious and 
complex elements of discord, both native and foreign, in Samoa, and then a mar- 
velous story of how these discordant elements have been at work during eight 
yt&rs. f, —PuMic Opinion. 



THE WORKS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

The following volumes, i6mo, green buckram, 6 volumes, 
in a box, $6.50. 

Fables. i6mo, $1.00. 

In these delightful fables will be found a new and interesting expression of 
Mr. Stevenson's genius. They are here collected and issued for the first time in 
book form, attractively bound, in uniform style with the "Vailima Letters.'' 

Vailima Letters. 2 vols., i6mo, $2.25. 

" The work is full of charm, of brightness, of changeful light and shadow and 
thick-coming fancies. Again it is readable in a high degree, and will, we make no 
doubt, delight thousands of readers." — London Spectator. 



The Ebb Tide. i6mo, $1.25. 

The Amateur Emigrant. 

i6mo. $1.25. 



M a c a i r e . A Melodramatic 
Farce. By R. L. Stevenson 
and W. E. Henley. i6mo, 

$1.00. 



IN SPECIAL EDITIONS. 

A Child's Garden of Verses. 

Profusely and beautifully illustrated by Charles 
i2mo, $1.50. 

" An edition to be recommended in every way. An artist possessing a graceful 
fancy and a sure decorative sense has supplied a profusion of illustrations. The 
letter-press is beautiful."—^. Y. Evening Post. 



New Edition 
Robinson. 



Ballads. i2mo, $1.00. 

A Child's Garden of Verses. 

i2mo, $1.00. 

Virginibus Puerlsque, and 

Other Papers. Cameo Edition. 
i6mo, $1.25. 

Underwoods. i2mo, $1.00. 



Three Plays.— Deacon Brodie, 

Beau Austin, Admiral Guinea. 

By R. L. Stevenson and W. 

E. Henley. 8vo, $2.00 net. 
The Suicide Club. [Ivory 

Series.] i6mo, 75 cents. 
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 

i2mo, $1.00. 



THE THISTLE EDITION. 

Sold only by Subscription. Each vol. 8vo. $2.00 net. 

This luxurious edition of Mr. Stevenson's works will be completed 
by adding to it the author's posthumous writings. This will add 
probably five volumes to the sixteen already issued, two of which are 
now ready, "Vailima Letters" and " Fleeming Jenkin," the latter 
containing also " Records of a Family of Engineers." 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

Ali5jk=i57 Fifth Avenue, = New York 




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